


you were yellow, but the lights were red

by scheifsforlife



Category: Men's Hockey RPF
Genre: 2013 Stanley Cup Run, Angst, Anxiety Attacks, Codependency, M/M, Pining, Red String of Fate, Self-Doubt, Soulmates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-02
Updated: 2020-06-24
Packaged: 2021-03-04 07:02:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 28,893
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24509614
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scheifsforlife/pseuds/scheifsforlife
Summary: Patrick wakes up in his painfully lonely hotel room the morning after the Hawks beat the Kings and promptly freaks the fuck out.
Relationships: Patrick Kane/Jonathan Toews
Comments: 35
Kudos: 212





	1. Yellow

**Author's Note:**

> Hi! So, this fic is loosely based around ideas found in [this](https://archiveofourown.org/works/10690023). It’s an amazing fic, and I really suggest reading if you’re into that kind of thing cause it’s super well written. Basically, I used the idea of moodstrings for this, but there’s some more lore in this universe than in that fic.
> 
> Some things to keep in mind:  
> \- Red strings are for lovers/soulmates  
> \- Red strings are associated with soulbonds in which a person can feel certain things that their partner is feeling  
> \- Yellow strings are for friendships  
> \- Green strings are for old friends  
> \- Blue strings are for family  
> \- Purple strings are for a person’s first love  
> \- Black strings indicate toxic relationships/relationships you have cut out of your life  
> \- Strings cannot be cut in this universe, will just turn black if the relationship turns sour  
> \- The bond associated with red strings can snap though, and if it does, the two people involved will just go back to being friends.  
> \- Two-toned strings are a thing in this universe. They happen when Person A feels something towards Person B that isn’t reciprocated. For example, Person A could be Person B’s first love (purple string), but Person A could only see Person B as their best friend (yellow string)  
> \- Strings can change depending on how a person feels towards another person at a certain time  
> \- People that can see a specific type of mood strings (for example, red) are called Seers  
> \- People who can see all types of strings are called Oracles
> 
> Hopefully this makes sense? If not, there’s a section in this chapter that should explain it better.
> 
> The title of this fic comes from [Easy to Hate](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ivlug6d8RAA) by Waterparks.
> 
> Please enjoy!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please note that this chapter mentions separation anxiety multiple times and the main character suffers a panic attack at some point.

* * *

_  
“I’m colour-coding my moods_

_You’re yellow_

_I’m natural blue_

_Let’s get together and be green like my insides”_

**_-Stupid for You, Waterparks_ **

* * *

Patrick wakes up in his painfully lonely hotel room the morning after the Hawks beat the Kings and promptly freaks the fuck out.

Why? Because there, wrapped around his pinkie finger, next to Jackie’s blue family string is a fucking. Red. String.

The strings aren’t physical, it’s not like anyone can trip over them. They’re more like visible reminders of connections between people. Of course, only visible on the hands of the people who own them. Most people can only see their half of the connection string, although some like Patrick are lucky enough to be able to see the other half of all of them. They can also change over time depending on how you currently view the person. Like, a blue string can go to a black string after a family has a rough divorce. They’re touchable and pullable, but no one really does that, cause it can affect the person on the other side. Patrick likes to touch his, though, cause it makes him feel closer to his people. He used to do it a lot back in rookie year, when he was in a new city, alone, and without his parents. It must have looked fucking weird to other people, even if all Patrick was doing was wrapping the string around his finger, cause to them, he was just grabbing nothing. But, no one ever mentioned it to him, because asking people about their strings is really fucking impolite. Patrick learned that the hard way when he got drunk, asked a cabbie about his strings, and ended up arrested and splashed on the front page of Deadspin.

Contrary to popular belief, Patrick doesn’t really have that many strings. The average extrovert has anywhere from 25 to 30 strings. Patrick has 12. He has his five blue strings connecting to all the members of his family, six yellow strings connecting to Jonny, Sharpy, Seabs, Duncs, Crow, and his best friend in Buffalo. And finally, probably the most embarrassing string of them all, his purple string to Sam Gagner. That one was a complete curveball. Patrick remembers looking down at his hand just before the Blackhawks got onto the podium, seeing the purple string, and following it with his eyes to Sam fucking Gagner of all people. But then he was drafted, and he got over it.

But now, this new red string is throwing him for a loop. Patrick knows it in his bones that it’s a hockey player. After all, he hasn’t seen anyone but hockey players pretty much for the past year since the whole Cinco de Mayo incident, and typically, red strings don’t just manifest out of nowhere. It usually is someone you know very well, someone who is suited to be your soulmate for-fucking-ever. Only a super unlucky person got a soulmate who they didn’t already know or they weren’t in close vicinity to. Scientists theorize it’s because the person who knows you best is often the person who is most suited for you. The strings know that, so they tie you together. You never really hear about soulmates who are just “compatible” to each other. It’s supposed to be an instant click. Whoever is on the other end of Patrick’s string is meant to be Patrick’s everything, slot into all the places where Patrick doesn’t fit.

And that’s fucking terrifying to Patrick. What if it’s someone on the team? Then the separation anxiety if one of them got traded (and knowing hockey, it’ll likely be Patrick after the shit he pulled in Madison) will be so intense that the other will have to follow. And who would want to move from a winning team? What if it’s someone on another team? Then the separation anxiety would be bad now. Patrick would never be able to handle it. What if it’s someone on the Kings? That would suck balls, they’re all jerks. What if it’s Segs? That would be a mess, they’re way too similar. What if it’s Ryan Kesler? Patrick gags. No, fate wouldn’t tie him to that.

Patrick doesn’t have time to think about this though. Breakfast is at 7:30, sharp and their plan leaves for Phoenix just after 9. If he doesn’t haul his ass out of bed now, he’s going to miss it. And he literally feels like he’s going to puke right now, so he can’t be going around skipping meals. He wonders if this is how Jonny felt rookie year, when his stomach wouldn’t cooperate with him, and he was left puking his guts out every night. Patrick doesn’t remember it very well, still too caught up with his own rookie season, but he remembers feeling sick to his stomach and wishing he could take Jonny’s pain away. Because if it felt anything like Patrick feels right now, it must have fucking sucked.

Patrick tugs himself out of bed, hands shaking, He moves towards the bathroom slowly, which really shouldn’t make sense, because nothing really changed. He just got a very inconvenient red string that he’ll figure out how to deal with later. But he still feels like he’s wading through quicksand.

Patrick’s hands are shaking when he finally reaches for the shower curtain and gets in for a quick rinse. He lathers his hair with some of the organic shampoo that Jonny got him for Christmas last year and tries, futilely, to not look at his string. The thing is, it’s really pretty, much prettier than any of his other strings. It’s insanely thick, almost like rope, but doesn’t feel hard or scratchy. In fact, it feels soft, like silk. Patrick thinks that he read somewhere that a thicker string makes a stronger bond, but he thinks that’s bullshit. After all, his yellow string to Jonny is thin as hell, and Jonny’s one of his best friends. It’s got some weird-ass design on it too, that’s too small for Patrick to see with the unaided eye, but he can sort of make out some sort of curve on it. He’s never heard of strings having patterns on them before, but he guesses there’s a first time for everything

His tangent gets broken by a pounding knock on his hotel door.

“Hurry up Kaner! Breakfast is in ten!”

It’s Jonny, of course, being the diligent captain he is. Usually, he’ll do a room call about 15 minutes before breakfast call time, but he always lets Patrick relax a little bit. He’s using his “no funny business” voice though, so Patrick finishes up as quickly as he can. The red string thing can wait until later. He drags on a pair of Blackhawks sweatpants and hoodie and shoves on a hat before heading downstairs for breakfast. 

Most of the vets are already there, and wow that is weird to think about, that he’s a veteran now. Sharpy, Seabs, Duncs, and Crow have already claimed a table in a corner, munching away on what looks to be omelettes and avocados. 

Jonny is still grabbing food, it looks like, so Patrick grabs a plate and starts loading it, hoping to catch Jonny before he reaches the table. Not really for any specific reason. It’s just, he missed rooming with Jonny a lot last night. It had put him embarrassingly off-kilter like he couldn’t sleep without hearing Jonny’s sniffle-snore. He was just next door, but Patrick still felt like he had lost a limb. He wanted Jonny to know that he missed him.

His plans are interrupted though when Shawsy comes in with Saader and proceeds to fall back into him and crash both of them into a table. But what surprises Patrick is that it’s not fake-dramatically like he and Sharpy are pulling some kind of prank. No, he genuinely looks shocked, like he can’t believe what’s going on in front of him. And he keeps pointing between Patrick and Jonny like something’s there in between them. Jonny seems unbothered by it, so Patrick follows his lead and ignores Shawsy, who is still openly guffawing even as he gets into line for food.

Patrick finishes grabbing his food and is headed towards Jonny, when Shawsy yanks him out of it, nearly causing him to spill his omelette all over his hoodie.

“What the fuck Shawsy?” Patrick asks angrily.

He’s almost inclined to yell at him because Jonny’s sat down at the table now, and there’s no way Patrick’ll be able to tell him that he misses him without getting chirped into the next galaxy by Sharpy and Seabs.

“You and Jonny,” Shawsy whispers, like it’s a secret.

“Yeah? And?”

Patrick tries to move away, but Shawsy just shoves a hand into the collar of his hoodie and clings tight. And Patrick is full-on irritated now because what the fuck, Shawsy won’t let him sit the hell down.

“You and Jonny,” repeats Shawsy, like it’ll clear anything up.

Patrick stares at him blank-faced.

“What about us? Yeah, we aren’t rooming together anymore.”

Shawsy looks exasperated like he can’t believe that Patrick is being so dumb.

“No, you complete idiot,” Shawsy says, rubbing a hand across his face tiredly. “Look.”

And then Shawsy YANKS on Patrick’s red string. He yanks so hard that Patrick falls back and spills his food all over his front. But he can’t even find it in himself to care because Shawsy is pointing at Jonny and Patrick sees it too. Sees the bagel Jonny is holding sock him in the face at the same time that Shawsy tugs on Patrick’s red string. And shit, Jonny’s yellow string is connected to his hand. Which can only mean one thing.

Jonny’s his soulmate.

Well fuck.

* * *

Shawsy fills him in on the bus to the airport. Usually, Patrick would sit with Jonny on the bus, but he had looked so pissed off when he saw Patrick leaving breakfast (which was totally not his fault cause he did have to clean up) that Patrick figured it wasn’t a good idea. Also, he wants to know how the hell Shawsy found out.

Shawsy passes him a granola bar as he sits down, with an apologetic look on his face, as if he’s saying “sorry I ruined your breakfast” through his eyes.

“Well,” Patrick says, giving Shawsy a pointed look and gesturing for him to talk. “Tell me about it.”

“I’m a Seer,” is what Shawsy ends up saying, after a few minutes of silence. “We can see the strings. Not all of them, no that’s an Oracle’s job, but yeah. Seers can see certain types of strings. Like, I know a guy who can see everyone’s blue strings.”

Patrick makes a confused face.

“Well, I can see the ends of my strings, and I know that most people can only see half. Well, unless it’s red, cause everyone knows everyone can see the end of their completed red string. So am I a Seer?”

Shawsy shakes his head and moves awkwardly in his seat, like he doesn’t want to be having this conversation right now.

“No, that’s just a genetic thing. You can see the ends of your strings, but you can’t see the ends of everyone’s strings. I can see everyone’s strings that are like yours and Jonny’s.”

They’re almost at the airport now, the drive being surprisingly quick for LA traffic, and Patrick can see from Shawsy’s fidgeting that he probably won’t get another opportunity for this.

“Okay, okay. A couple more questions then. What do you mean by mine and Jonny’s string? Is it weird? Different?”

Shawsy nods.

“It’s a two-toned string, which is the kind I can see. It happens when Person A feels something towards Person B that isn’t reciprocated. Like, if your purple string person only views you as a friend, you’ll see yellow on their end. Happened to me. First girl I ever loved, Diana, friend-zoned me through them. She was a Seer too. You and Jonny, it’s not uncommon outside of hockey, but you definitely see them way less than pure red or pure yellow. The chances are like, 1 in 100 000 people.”

Yay, he and Jonny are special snowflakes.

“So, what happens then? Does his side turn red? My side turn yellow? Does it just stay like that?”

Shawsy shakes his head, as the bus jerks to a stop. They’re at the airport now, and most people are starting to file off.

“No, usually it doesn’t stay like that, especially since you guys are always around each other. It only stays two-toned if you guys are almost never in contact with each other. The strings represent the last emotion you felt towards them. Me and Diana, it’s still two-toned cause I haven’t seen her since like, the sixth grade. Yours and Jonny’s should turn in about a month or two. The chances of it not changing are insanely slim. It’s about 50/50 on whether or not it goes back to yellow, but it’s more likely that it’ll go red on his side, cause soulmates and all that shit. If you’re okay with that.”

Patrick is way more than just okay with it. Jonny’s always been weirdly special to him. Best friends, sure, but even more than that. It was like magic from the first time they had hit the ice together, for real, cause they always play the whole Junior Flyers thing up for the media. He doesn’t remember playing a single shift with Jonny then, nevertheless playing full games on his line. But Patrick had known ever since Jonny had yelled at him to pick it up during rookie development camp, that he was different. There was a definite click, even though he had just thought it was their friendship string locking into place. They just worked together. He had never understood why, but it’s probably because the universe has decided that they’re meant for each other.

It isn’t love, yet. Maybe soon though because he’s always fucking enamoured with everything Jonny is doing ever. But he wouldn’t have it any other way, cause man, Jonny fucking rules. Even if he sometimes makes Patrick think otherwise with his Captain Serious bullshit and messiness. Jonny’s going to be the best life-partner ever when his string turns.

“If you want,” Shawsy says as he pushes Patrick into the aisle of the bus and towards the door. “I can set you up with an Oracle. They’ll probably be more useful than me.”

Patrick nods. He has a shit ton of unanswered questions still, and Shawsy doesn’t seem like he wants to answer them.

“Yeah man, set it up.”

They’re walking into the airport now, so Patrick asks his final question before the conversation ends for good.

“Should I tell him? Or anyone else for that matter? Are there other Seers on the team that I should worry about blabbing?”

Shawsy shakes his head vigorously.

“You don’t want to tell him, not unless you want to go back to being just friends. Because the inevitable freakout from that will be so bad that the strings will sever the bond. For good,” Shawsy says, lowering his voice as they enter the airport. “Trust me, I know.”

Patrick should really pry, but he figures he shouldn’t. It’s always a touchy subject to bring up other people’s strings, even if they’ve offered it up on a golden platter.

“As for telling anyone else, you can if you want. I’m pretty sure that there aren’t any other Seers on the team, but we never like to make ourselves known. It just leads to sessions like this where people bombard us with string questions.”

Patrick nods and the conversation ends. It’s a good thing too because Sharpy jumps on them as soon as they’re finished, ruffling Shawsy’s hair and putting Patrick’s head in a deadlock.

“What are you two assholes talking about? You both look like Captian Serious over there.”

Considering Jonny doesn’t so much as look up from his phone, Sharpy’s chirp doesn’t land.

“Just talking about how Patrick couldn’t pick up any girls in Switzerland because he’s not as tall as the Scandinavians they’re used to,” Shawsy says cheerfully as if their conversation hadn’t happened at all.

Which is good because Patrick cannot let that stand.

“Fuck you, I’m a stud! Who wouldn’t want to hit this? If I can get a number from someone right here, right now, you owe me 20 bucks.”

Patrick gets on the plane with twenty more bucks to his name, a girl’s phone number, and confidence that Jonny will one day love him.

Cause it’s destiny baby.

* * *

They win a lot over the next month. It’s almost like they can’t lose in regulation. The team is working so smoothly. It’s like someone put oil in the gears, and they’re finally moving them. All four lines are perfect, they’re winning like crazy, and everything is going great.

In hockey.

It’s been almost a month since Patrick’s string turned red, but there hasn’t been any progress on the Jonny front. His string is still as yellow as the summer sun, and it’s kind of sucked for Patrick. Now that he’s really let himself love Jonny freely, and he does love Jonny, it’s hard. Hard not to lean into the soft touches Jonny sometimes gave him after a good game. Hard not to kiss Jonny’s bruises better when he sees them in the locker room. And much harder not to sneak into Jonny’s hotel room, curl up next to him, and have him run his hands through Patrick’s hair. Not that Jonny would want that anyways, considering he still sees Patrick as just his fucking best-friend. The separation anxiety is pretty intense on Patrick’s end, but he hopes it gets better after Jonny’s string turns.

They have a day off after their shootout loss to Anaheim, and Patrick feels like shit. He had a secondary assist on Leddy’s goal, but failed to do anything in the shootout. And after, when Jonny had practically booked it out of there as quickly as possible, he had to physically fight the urge to follow him home. It was mentally exhausting because all his heart was telling him was to “go, go, follow Jonny, Jonny sad, cheer up Jonny” while his brain was telling him what a terrible idea it was.

Patrick is glad he didn’t though, cause according to the chirps from Seabs and Duncs in the team group chat, Jonny had picked up. A ten too. Patrick actually feels kind of nauseous but resists the urge to puke. It’ll all be over soon. He’s sure of it.

Sharpy comes with the cavalry for lunch, stating that he just wants to shoot the shit. Abby is practically glowing, even though she’s only showing a little bit, and Patrick is always up to play with Maddie, so lunch goes pretty well. It’s nice to be around them, even though it makes Patrick a little bit sad. Jonny could be here right now, and they could all be having a good time together. But he’s not, he’s at home with his kale smoothies and workout machine, and Patrick is here with the Sharps.

They stay late into the afternoon, so late that Abby asks to use Patrick’s guestroom to put Maddie down for her nap. Patrick has no qualms against it, so he just tells her to go for it, as he and Sharpy clear the table. When Abby’s nowhere in sight and Patrick is dumping the dishes in the sink to soak, Sharpy drops the bomb.

“So, when were you planning to tell me?”

Patrick freezes, the plate held in midair. He has no idea what the hell Sharpy is talking about, but it always makes him tense up when someone asks when you were planning to tell them something. It’s like your mind flashes back to every secret you’ve ever hid from them. But, even after going through that list, Patrick is still clueless.

“Tell you what?” Patrick asks, confused.

“Tell me that you’ve got a fucking red string,” is what Sharpy replies, without skipping a beat.

Patrick drops the ceramic plate he’s holding. It shatters loudly, but Patrick doesn’t care. He can’t hear anything right now, not above the ringing in his ears. How does Sharpy know? Is he a Seer? Holy shit, does he know it’s Jonny? Holy shit, has he TOLD Jonny?

Sharpy must see the panic on his face because he steadies Patrick with a hand on his shoulder.

“Relax. I can’t see all of your strings, just the red one. I’m a red string Seer.”

Wordlessly, Patrick starts to pick up the pieces of the plate, trying to give his hands something to do. It doesn’t work though, cause his hands keep shaking and a sharp piece ends up slicing his palm. Patrick doesn’t register the pain.

“Peeks! Stop that,” Sharpy says as he yanks the ceramic away from Patrick and cleans up the rest of the mess by himself.

Patrick doesn’t move until Sharpy shoves a Dora bandaid onto his hand and pushes him towards the coach. When they get there, Sharpy promptly settles Patrick down before sitting next to him. They don’t say anything for a long time, so long that Patrick sees Abby pop her head out from the hallway to check on what they’re doing. She must decide to leave them be though because she doesn’t come into the room. It’s like she knew they had something important to talk about.

“You can’t tell him,” Patrick whispers.

If Sharpy tells Jonny, he’ll flip out. Patrick knows that. Even though he’s gotten better at it, Jonny is still practically a hockey robot when it comes to feelings. He’ll shut down if Sharpy tells him that Patrick loves him. He’ll get super weird and awkward around Patrick, and they will probably never speak again. And aside from all that, Jonny doesn’t even love him right now, the strings say so. Even if he does fall in love with Patrick one day, Jonny relies on his strings to confirm his feelings. That’s how Jonny knew he had to cut Ryan O’Marra out of his life because his string turned black. If the string doesn’t turn red, Jonny will lock his feelings into a box and compartmentalize them until they’re gone. And where will that leave Patrick? Spiralling downwards, with abandonment issues, and probably playing hockey in another city. No, Patrick needs to fix this now, before Sharpy can tell Jonny and leave Patrick in this lonely, lonely, existence.

“Can’t tell who? Is it someone I know?”

Patrick nods, meekly, as he curls himself up into a ball. The thing is, he doesn’t want Sharpy to know. The more people know, the more likely Jonny will find out. And if it isn’t the right time, then Patrick will be left with a shattered bond and no Jonny. It’ll kill him. It already is killing Patrick to have to stay away.

“You know them. They sit in our locker room everyday.”

If he can see red strings, it’s only a matter of time before he sees Patrick’s stop dead in the middle of the locker room before it reaches Jonny. Might as well fess up now and try to stop the damage.

“Our locker room? Is it a teammate?”

Patrick doesn’t answer.

Sharpy whispers, “Is it Jonny?”

And Patrick breaks apart. He can’t even speak, just shakes and sobs his fucking eyes out. When he first found out it was Jonny, he had been fucking ecstatic. Patrick knew that they had a connection from the beginning and that being soulbonded to Jonny wouldn’t be a hassle. He thought it would be easy. He thought that he would just wake up one day, and Jonny would be there and would love him and it would all be okay. But now, it’s been nearly a month and Jonny hasn’t so much as talked to him outside of hockey. Because apparently not talking to Patrick has helped out both of their “hockey”. Which doesn’t even make any sense! It’s like they’re not even in the same book anymore, nevertheless the same page. And everything is perfect to Jonny because hockey’s working, but Patrick? Patrick feels lonelier than he ever has before. He just wants Jonny to be here all the time, but that’s not possible because the more he pushes Jonny to accept the bond, the more likely the bond will break.

And to be honest, he really just wants Jonny to love him for him. Not because fate suddenly decided it would be a good idea to tie them together for-fucking-life. But because Jonny looks at him and feels the exact same way that Patrick feels. That if he doesn’t have Jonny around every fucking day of his life and be able to love Jonny proper, he’s going to die.

“Oh Peeks,” Sharpy says, gathering Patrick into a hug.

They don’t say much else after that. Sharpy just keeps holding Patrick, and futilely, Patrick wishes it was Jonny. But Sharpy is pretty good too, and after about 10 minutes, Patrick stops crying with one last little sniffle. He figures that’s enough tears to spend on Jonny for this afternoon. After all, he does have to save some for tonight when he falls asleep to cold sheets.

The Sharps leave just before dinner time. Abby gives him a hug, a peck on the cheek, and an “it’ll get better soon.” He doesn’t know how she knows because he’s fairly sure she isn’t a Seer, but maybe it’s just the motherly instinct in her that recognizes something is wrong. Maddie smacks a kiss into his calf and orders him to visit soon. He promises, of course. He can’t deny his best girl anything.

Sharpy pulls him into a tight hug, so tight that Patrick feels like he might have left behind some bruises.

“I’m not going to tell him,” Sharpy whispers in his ear. “That’s your secret to tell, whenever you want. Just know I’ll be there for you.”

Sharpy releases him and slaps him lightly on the back. Patrick closes the door behind them, and for the first time in almost a month, he feels like he is fully and completely happy. Without Jonny around.

* * *

It’s like a weight’s been lifted off of his chest after he tells Sharpy about his red string. Patrick has someone to whine to about Jonny and all of his Jonnyisms (cause hell knows he’s not getting in an awkward conversation with Shawsy), and Sharpy is always ready to listen. He gives Patrick a lot of advice about strings in general and tells him all about how his and Abby’s red string was two-toned at the beginning too.

“It was purple on my end and yellow on hers,” Sharpy confessed after Patrick got him all hopped on white wine. “Happens more often than red and yellow, but still pretty rare. I stayed friends with her for so long that I thought I was going to suffocate from how often she friend-zoned me. But the day before I asked her out, it turned red. And that’s how I knew it was meant to be.”

Sometimes though, his stories about Abby and their red string made Patrick ache with want. He could see him and Jonny having this talk one day with some clueless rookie and spilling everything about their two-toned bond. But it just seems like a distant future Patrick is never going to experience, especially when Jonny legitimately dodged his fist-bump after a goal the other day, and he went home and cried. It’s starting to feel more and more like the bond is never going to take, and that Jonny is never going to fall in love with him. Jonny never wants to spend time with Patrick anymore, just with Saader, and Patrick hasn’t said anything to him outside of “good game” in three days. One night, when Patrick is exhausted from the separation anxiety, he stays up until 3 am searching up “is it possible to have a one-sided bond???” and gets back absolutely nothing but a resounding “yes”. Which scares him more than it necessarily should.

Even the win in St. Louis feels hollow. They shut them out, but they blank Patrick on the score sheet, so he doesn’t even get a “good game” from Jonny. That, and the fact that Jonny is going out for dinner with TJ Broshie after this solidly makes this the worst day in Patrick’s life since getting his red string.

He watches Jonny talk animatedly to the rest of the core about the win and his two goals. Patrick wishes he could go over there. In his mind, he knows that he could. But Patrick doesn’t know if he can restrain himself from spilling his feelings all over Jonny, so he just stays in his stall.

Patrick is just so tired of pretending. Pretending that he doesn’t love Jonny and that even without the string, he probably would’ve fallen in deep with him anyways. Pretending that it’s not killing Patrick on the inside to stay away, though theoretically, the bond should have taken by now. But no, Jonny’s string is still as yellow as ever, which means Patrick has to keep his distance.

But Patrick feels desperate. He feels like if he doesn’t have Jonny’s skin on his, right the fuck now, he’s going to explode. So he does something he probably shouldn’t do. He wraps his pinkie around his red string and tugs.

It’s hard enough to shock Jonny out of his conversation, but not so obvious that the other guys notice. But Jonny turns back and looks at Patrick, confused. Probably wondering what Patrick needed so badly that he couldn’t just walk over to Jonny and ask him for it. Jonny must see something in Patrick’s face (Patrick hopes it isn’t love) because his confusion fades and his eyes soften to the point where Patrick can see the laugh lines around them. God, he wants to touch them. He wants to kiss them. Holy shit, he’s so screwed.

Jonny makes his way over to Patrick, quickly ending his talk with the other guys. They don’t sit next to each other anymore, cause Jonny decided he was tired of Patrick messing up his mojo by cleaning his stall for him (what if he gets tired of Patrick doing that for life?), but Jonny takes a seat in Shawsy’s stall. Shawsy, who is making faces at Saader, doesn’t seem to care.

“Hey,” Jonny mumbles, even though the locker room is super loud, and no one would be able to hear them if they were talking about something important.

Patrick resists the urge to press his thumb into Jonny’s face scar.

“Hey,” is what he answers back, lamely.

Patrick wishes Segs didn’t get him to stop wearing mouthguards because he needs something to chew on right now to stop him from becoming a puddle of anxious goo. He taps his fingers anxiously against his lips instead.

Now that Jonny’s here, so close to Patrick, it’s like a dam breaks in his mind. Something just clicks, and the want flows out like a waterfall. And suddenly, all Patrick can hear is the bond thumping in his ears.

“Kiss him,” it sings. “Kiss him. Make him know that you’re his. Tell him. Tell him. Tell him!”

“Peeks?”

And oh, Jonny’s still here. Shit, Jonny’s calling him Peeks. He only does that when they’re alone and he’s worried about Patrick. He knows that Patrick pretends to hate it in public. The fact that they’re in a crowded locker room, and he said that must mean that he’s really worried. Fuck, what did Patrick say while he was stuck in the bond?

“Don’t worry about the game. You’ll score next time,” Jonny says, placing a hand on Patrick’s shoulder.

Patrick lets out an unconscious sob, and then immediately prays to all the gods that Jonny hadn’t heard. It’s just that Patrick feels like he’s a dying man in the middle of the Sahara Desert, and Jonny is his water, his salvation. He feels like Jonny hasn’t touched him in months, not the minutes since Jonny had given him a soft fist bump. Most importantly though, he feels whole, like a circuit being completed. He can’t wait until this is his everyday, and he doesn’t have to worry about asking for it because he knows he’ll get it.

But there’s still something nagging at his mind.

“Don’t go to dinner with Broshie,” Patrick says, before clasping a hand over his mouth.

Patrick wants to cry. The bond thrums with “he knows, he knows, he knows,” and he’s never been more embarrassed in his life. Firstly because Patrick had called Broshie, Broshie to Jonny’s face, and because he literally just begged Jonny to not go out with one of his friends all cause of how much Patrick wanted Jonny to stay here with him. He’s going to know about the bond, and it’ll shatter like glass and Patrick will be left grasping at the pieces. He has to leave before he says something else and makes in unfixable.

“I really should—”

Patrick makes a move to stand up, but Jonny shoves him back down with his hand. Once he’s sure that Patrick won’t leave though, Jonny trails his palm down the length of his arm, and laces their hands together between the join of the two stalls, so no one can see. Patrick bites back a whimper. He wishes that this was real, that maybe Jonny wasn’t just trying to be good friend, but that he actually was doing this because he wanted to. He forces himself to enjoy it though, cause like hell he’ll give up to the opportunity to make physical contact with Jonny outside of hockey. Still, he trains his eyes downwards, because he thinks he might fall apart if he sees pity in Jonny’s eyes.

“Peeks, I’m not going to have dinner with TJ,” Jonny whispers, while rubbing his thumb into one of the freckles on Patrick’s hand.

The world was tilted on an axis before, but now, just from Jonny doing this one little thing, it finally feels right-side up.

“I think if I did go meet up with him,” Jonny chuckles under his breath, “he would sock me in the face out of sheer embarrassment that he lost. I’m not going anywhere.”

Patrick doesn’t look up for a long time, not wanting the dream to end. But when he does, he finds Jonny already looking at him, with anything but pity in his eyes. They look reverent, like Patrick is the best thing that Jonny has seen in his entire life. And that’s when Patrick starts to believe.

They walk out of the arena with their hands still laced together and their two-toned string wrapped solidly around their pinkies.

* * *

The streak ends on a Friday. They lose to the worst fucking team in the entire league and break it. Patrick’s on the ice for two of the goals and feels the shittiest he’s felt all season when he gets off the ice. He just wants to get to the hotel as fast as he can, so he can pass out from exhaustion. Patrick has been having trouble sleeping lately, and if he doesn’t get in bed within the next hour, he’s going to be up all night thinking about this loss. He already can’t sleep without Jonny in the room, and he’ll be fucked if he doesn’t get any sleep before they fly to Edmonton.

Suddenly, Patrick’s hit with a wave of nausea, but it’s not coming from him. It’s coming from Jonny, who has just finished a meeting with Q, and it’s reverberating through the bond. He immediately slumps into his stall and presses his hands to his eyes. Distantly, Patrick feels Jonny shoving up walls, like he’s trying to contain the dizziness. It must be the concussion acting up then.

Patrick wants to help him. Take away some of that pain, or at least share it. He wants to walk over to Jonny’s stall and have it be easy to tuck Jonny’s hand into his and rub his head to ease the lingering hurt out. He wants it more than anything he has ever wanted in his life, to love Jonny and to have Jonny love him back just as hard. Patrick wants it so much, that unconsciously, he sends the feeling through the bond to Jonny.

Jonny eyes snap up at him before Patrick realizes what he’s just done, and he yanks himself out of it so hard that he feels lightheaded. He sent too much, which means Jonny must know, and… Jonny must not want it if he’s death-glaring Patrick this intensely. Shit, Patrick is going to have to tell him now, even if he doesn’t want to, even if he wants it to change naturally. He’s going to have to risk it breaking because Jonny is clearly freaking out, and Patrick needs to stop the damage before it severs for good.

He’s psyching himself up to do it, right here, right now, when Jonny stands up to do his captain’s speech and spends the next 15 minutes rambling to the whole locker room about how it isn’t the end of the world and how they’ll play better in Edmonton. Not once does he even chance a look at Patrick, and practically books it to do his own cooldown away from Patrick, when he knows damn well that he and Patrick always do their cooldowns together. It’s a legitimate dagger to the heart, but Patrick just finds an empty corner a little far away from the locker room and does his stretches. He has to bite back sobs the whole time, and by the end, his lips are swollen cherry red, but no one has to know.

He doesn’t get a chance to talk to Jonny until they’re at the hotel later. A lot of the guys are going into the players’ lounge to try and chill out for a bit, and for the first time, Jonny ignores his captainly duties and says he’s heading up to his room. Patrick catches the elevator just before the door closes, shoves himself in, and presses the button for their floor. There’s no one else going up with them, and they’re using the priority elevator so that other non-hockey player guests don’t bother them. Patrick should have Jonny all to himself.

“Jonny, we need to talk.”

Jonny doesn’t respond, which means he probably wasn’t paying attention to Patrick. Not like he ever is unless Patrick is being annoying or problematic, which kind of hurts. Patrick tries again.

“Jonny?”

He feels like he says it louder than before, but Jonny still doesn’t acknowledge his existence, outside of a slight clench of his jaw. Which is fucking amazing by the way. But this isn’t the time to be thinking about Jonny’s jaw. Patrick doesn’t know the next time he’ll be able to get Jonny alone, so he needs to do this now before he chickens out and Jonny spirals out of control.

Patrick tucks his pinkie under their string and pulls gently. Jonny’s eyes meet his immediately, but he doesn’t look confused like in the locker room in St. Louis. They look pissed off and angry. And it’s directed at Patrick.

“What do you want Kaner?”

In the same way Peeks is never used in the locker room, Kaner is never used outside the locker room. It’s a nickname for the ice. The only other times that Jonny has called him that is after the cabbie punched him and Cinco de Mayo. Jonny must be in freakout mode already.

“Jonny, I know you’re angry about the game, but we need to talk now.”

Jonny scoffs and fucking explodes like Mentos in a Coke bottle.

“I’m angry about the game? At least I scored. You did jackshit for the team.”

Patrick reels so hard that his back slams against the elevator wall. He can feel an anxiety attack building steadily, the bond humming with “wrong, wrong, wrong”. He feels like he doesn’t know where he stands with Jonny anymore, like everything that happened in St. Louis was just washed away with 3 sentences. Even Jonny looks shocked that he said what he did, and he makes an aborted move to touch Patrick. Patrick shies away immediately. If Jonny touches him now, he doesn’t know what will happen. He might do something he regrets.

“Patrick—”

The elevator dings, and Patrick gets out of there before Jonny can say another word to him. He practically runs down the hall to his room and spends longer than he should trying to get the card into the lock, but when he finally does, he slams the door and locks himself in the bathroom.

It’s not the first panic attack he’s had since the string appeared and certainly not the most intense either. One time, Jonny had yelled at him on the bench right before a game ended, and while Patrick doesn’t care about Jonny giving it to him on the ice, Jonny had carried this specific conversation into the locker room and through cooldown. Patrick had felt on edge the entire time and was just able to hold out until he made it into his car. He sat there for another hour, watching as others left the UC and stared at him weirdly for staying in his Hummer. Even after everyone left, Patrick didn’t get up the nerve to leave until security forced him to.

Now, Patrick sits with his back to the door and can’t fucking breathe. He presses a hand to his solar plexus, hoping that it does something to his diaphragm so he doesn’t feel like he’s just run a thousand fucking liners. He’s there for a long time, probably too long, trying desperately to do some of the box-breathing he had learned about online. There are tears running down his face, and he tries to put some moisture in his mouth, but all he can say is a dry “fuck, fuck, fuck.” After box-breathing for a while though, the tears stop, and Patrick is feeling good enough to drag himself over to the sink and drink some water. There isn’t a glass in the bathroom to drink it from, but Patrick just cups his hands and drinks from there, before splashing his face with water.

The digital clock on his nightstand tells him that it’s been two hours since he locked himself into the bathroom when he comes out. He changes into his pyjamas quickly and flops down on the massive king bed the organization got him. It feels too big for him, and the sheets are so, so unbearably cold. He climbs in anyways, praying for sleep. There’s an adjoining door in this room though, so Patrick can kind of hear a muffled sniffle-snore coming from Jonny’s room, even though it’s closed.

Still, it’s not enough. By the time 3 am rolls around, Patrick feels uncomfortably lonely. He can’t sleep for the nth night in a row, and the bond is making him so desperate, and for once, he just wants to give into it. He just wants to feel normal again and not like he’s drowning all the damn time. He wants what it wants, in the end. So, he gives in.

The bond guides him out of bed and towards the adjoining door. For a second, Patrick thinks it’s going to make him open the door, but as his hand reaches for the door handle, another force slams into his mind and forces him to just sit on his ass with his back to it. But the sad part is, it’s not some weird outside voodoo that doesn’t feel like the bond at all. No, it’s Jonny’s side of the bond. The yellow side. The side that just wants them to be friends, and it knows if Patrick walks into Jonny’s room right now, they’ll never be just friends again.

And that’s what breaks him. The fact that Jonny just wants to be friends, has always just wanted to be friends, and will never what Patrick feels. Patrick’s side of the bond has been leading him astray, telling him to tell Jonny, like Jonny wanted the same thing he did, when in reality, he didn’t. Patrick had hope, but now it’s gone, and fuck, Shawsy was wrong. It’s a one-sided bond, just like the ones he had read about where one person is just left pining while the other makes new connections and maybe even falls in love with another person. And it hits Patrick with a jolt that Jonny will never, ever love him. No matter how much Patrick’s red string tries to make it happen. The string will just be two-toned forever, like Shawsy and Diana’s.

Patrick sits with his back to Jonny’s door, sobbing silently into his own hands and feels more pathetic than he ever has in his entire life.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading! Chapters should be coming within the next week or 2 depending on my motivation level. If you have any questions about this 'verse for me, feel free to leave them in the comments! I'll try and answer them the best I can.


	2. Blue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi again! Spent a while editing this one, so hopefully, it's good?
> 
> There's some more lore in this one, mainly relating to Oracles and Seers:
> 
> \- Occasionally, depending on the person, Oracles can read the strength of a string bond and the future health of it. Hence the name Oracle.  
> \- Some Seers can also "see" who is on the other end of someone's string, even if they aren't in direct sight.
> 
> I didn't want to add this to the beginning notes last time, simply because Patrick doesn't deal with any people who can actually do this, but he does in this chapter!
> 
> Speaking of which, see anyone/anything new in the tags? ;)))
> 
> **Warnings (a little bit spoilery, but you might want to read):**
> 
> \- Mention of Duncan Keith/Brent Seabrook. They aren't together in the 'verse, nor will they be, but there is a line that directly mentions their past relationship.  
> \- Mentions of Corey Perry/Ryan Getzlaf. Again, they aren't together, and it's only a small part.  
> \- Unhealthy codependency from Patrick at some points. He does move on from it though.
> 
> Please enjoy!

* * *

_  
“Everything is blue_

_His pills, his hands, his jeans_

_And now I’m covered in the colors pulled apart at the seams_

_And it’s blue_

_And it’s blue”_

**_-Colors, Halsey_ **

* * *

Life goes on. Patrick doesn’t really know why he thought it wouldn’t because he finally came to the realization that Jonny is never going to love him, but he had. It’s weird, adjusting to his new normal. He and Jonny don’t really hang out anymore, and he probably spends too much time sleeping on the Sharps’ couch because his back is feeling it. But Patrick is trying his best, and although he sees Jonny more than he would frankly like to, it’s okay because it’s the only time in the day when he doesn’t feel sick to his stomach.

Patrick really should go see a doctor for it, but most doctors don’t really deal with red string bonds or strings in general. He should just wait until Shawsy gives him the name of the Oracle, and maybe he can beg them to actually help him. Cause that’s all Patrick really wants, in the end. He wants to know when the ache will stop, when not being around Jonny won’t make him feel like he’s just been hit so badly that he’s got a concussion. Most days, it feels like it never will, that his body will always be compelling him to Jonny, no matter how much he fights it. He doesn’t know how it will be after they retire, and Jonny goes to fucking Winnipeg or something, and Patrick can’t see him all the time. He already feels like he’s just slogging through the time in between every practice and game; he doesn’t know what he’ll do when it’s not his every day.

They have a couple of days off before they play the Kings at home, and Patrick thinks it’d be good for him to unwind and get Jonny off of his mind. He realized though, after the first day, when he ate ice cream out of the bucket while watching “He’s Just Not That Into You”, that he wasn’t necessarily benefitting his situation. So, Patrick spends the next three days spending as much time with anyone, but Jonny, as possible. He goes to lunch with Sharpy, hangs out with the rookies, and goes to the lake with Crow. The lake one probably wasn’t a good idea because Crow’s boat was so rickety that Patrick got seasick, and fishing reminds him of Jonny. Which obviously just gives him a massive migraine.

Tonight, he feels proud of himself because he’s sitting on Seabs’s couch and not Sharpy’s. That’s an improvement at least. Seabs is running around doing laundry and dishes when he arrives because Dayna is pregnant, and in her words, “has been doting on her since Week -1.” Seabs doesn’t tell her to shut up to protect his “manliness”, so Patrick thinks it’s probably true. It makes Patrick a little sad to see them though, cause he always thought that he would be able to have kids one day. Not now, obviously, but in the future when hockey was solid, and he was ready. Looking down at his two-toned string though, he knows it’s never going to be a possibility. He’s never going to find anyone who even remotely compares to Jonny, and he’ll never be able to have a kid without desperately wanting them to have some part of Jonny’s genetic material.

It’s embarrassingly pathetic how much every part of his life revolves around Jonny, like the planets to the Sun. He woke up this morning, took one look at his blender, and almost broke into tears because he remembered the time Jonny destroyed his old one trying to make a wheatgrass smoothie. He drove by Michigan Avenue, and he remembered the time he went inside the Blackhawks Store and acted disgusted at wearing Jonny’s jersey, even though putting the last name on his back had felt nothing but resoundingly right. There’s even a dent in the wall of Seabs’s house that reminds him of Jonny, and how he tackled Seabs after he lost a game of fucking Mario Kart and threw the controller at the wall for good measure. Patrick hadn’t even realized how intertwined their lives were until they weren’t allowed to be anymore. There are so many moments now when Patrick turns to say something to Jonny but just ends up staring at the space where he should be, because he was never there in the first place. And, even though the bond is constantly tugging him towards Jonny, Patrick knows that he’s not selfish enough to ask Jonny to be there at all.

Patrick’s nursing a beer and watching some nature documentary that was on the DVR when Seabs finally finishes all of his doting, looking absolutely exhausted. Dayna has turned in early, which means it’s just them. Seabs is apparently so tired that he doesn’t even bother looking at Patrick, just flops all over him, causing Patrick to slosh his beer onto his t-shirt.

“Hey!” Patrick says, trying to push Seabs, the fattie, away. “Watch where you’re going fucker!”

Seabs just grumbles and shoves over. The nature documentary drones on, with birds chirping some happy song in the background. Patrick idly wonders if Jonny had recorded this before he had moved out of Seabs’s place, but he puts an end to that thought immediately. Thinking about Jonny will lead to Patrick missing Jonny, which just leads down a road of melancholy. It must show in Patrick’s face though because Seabs quickly snatches his beer out of his hand and gives him a concerned look.

“Patrick, you and Jonny haven’t been hanging out much lately.”

Patrick hadn’t thought it was obvious, at least not to the rookies. But, he supposes he should have known that Seabs, the team teddy bear, would notice the tension between him and Jonny.

“It’s nothing. We’re growing up, becoming different. We like different things now.”

Seabs raises an eyebrow like he doesn’t believe a single word Patrick just said.

“You codependent fuckers suddenly just decided that you were too different to hang out with each other even though you guys have been hanging off each others’ arms since Junior Flyers?”

Patrick rolls his eyes, but Seabs is right. He and Jonny have been attached at the hip forever. It’s insanely out of character for either of them to avoid each other unless they’re fighting. But he can’t tell Seabs about the bond. It’s already not enough for Patrick. If it gets ripped away from him because Seabs told Jonny, he doesn’t know what he’s going to end up with. Likely, just pieces of the person he used to be.

“Fuck you, you know we lie about that to the media. And who are you calling codependent? You and [ Jigsaw ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v7swasJaH2w) can’t be away from each other for more than 2 days without one of you breaking down.”

Patrick doesn’t mention how he does the exact same thing.

“It’s not the same, and you know it Peekaboo. Duncs and I, we’re tied together.”

Patrick snorts. He and Jonny may be connected through the whole “faces of the franchise” thing, but Duncs and Seabs are inseparable on and off the ice. Where one goes, the other follows.

“Sure, Seabs, sure.”

But Seabs doesn’t look like he’s joking. He genuinely looks serious.

“Peekaboo, I’m not kidding. Duncs...he’s my red string.”

Shocked, Patrick conks his head the arm of Seabs’s couch.

“What?” Patrick says, a little bit dazed. “No he’s not. Sharpy! You can come out now, prank’s over.”

Sharpy isn’t there. Nor is anyone else. It’s just him and Seabs on the couch, and Patrick knows for a fact that there aren’t any hidden cameras in Seabs’s house. Dayna wouldn’t allow it. And if it’s not a prank, that must mean that Duncs really is Seabs’s red string and holy shit.

“It’s not something we like to advertise,” Seabs says when he realizes Patrick is totally and completely shocked by the revelation. “We dated for a bit during our rookie year, but it was a total trainwreck. We decided we were better off as friends and called it a day. Then I met Dayna, and he met Kelly-Rae and that was that.”

Patrick doesn’t understand. Red strings are supposed to be your forever person. The person who can hand you a drink without you even having to ask for it. The person who knows your coffee order by heart, even though you’ve never straight up told them. The person who you don’t even have to look across the ice to pass to because you just know they’ll be there. They’re the person who knows you best. But they’re also the person that can love you the fullest, and a lot of the time, people say it’s like physical torture being away from your red string person and trying to love someone else. He doesn’t know how Seabs and Duncs can handle being away from each other, nevertheless loving other people.

Clearly, Seabs sees his confusion and saves Patrick from having to ask an unbearably awkward question.

“Duncs and I can handle having wives because our string is literally paper-thin. We see each other all the time and that’s enough. My purple string is as thick as a garden hose and connects to Dayna, and his purple string connects to Kelly-Rae. We make it work. And you can make it work with Jonny too.”

Patrick doesn’t even know how Seabs knows about the Jonny thing, but he doesn’t care to ask. He’s too busy trying to connect the dots. Could he ever do that? Find someone else to love and cherish, have a couple of kids with, love them even though the string says no? He doesn’t think so. Maybe it comes with time, but Patrick gets jittery when Jonny isn’t in sight. He’s practically an insomniac because it’s never warm enough in his room for him to sleep, and no matter how many blankets he gets or how much he turns up the heat, it would never compare to how he’d feel if Jonny was there with him, octopus arms wrapped all around him. Also, their bond is as thick as a rope and keeps getting thicker every day. Seabs can only handle it because his and Duncs’s bond could potentially be shredded with scissors. If bonds could be cut.

“I—no.”

If just the thought makes him extremely uncomfortable, he’d never be able to handle the real thing. Seabs and Duncs, while codependent, are two separate entities, Venus and Mars basically. Just because it works for them, doesn’t mean it would ever work for him and Jonny. 

Seabs doesn’t push or say anything else and seems to have passed out, so Patrick picks up his beer again. He cringes when he hears Jonny’s voice in his head telling him that it’s bad for him, but he chugs it down anyways. Fuck Jonny and his stupid stupid string. It’s made Patrick care too much for Jonny and his well being.

Although he’s not sure he can care about anything other than Jonny anymore, not when he’s the Earth needing the Sun to live.

* * *

Shawsy pulls him aside when he’s stretching before the game against Anaheim.

“Hey,” he whispers. “I got you a guy.”

So, Patrick forgoes the rest of his stretches to follow Shawsy through the dark hallways of the UC. If he looks like shit during the game, then he looks like shit. This is definitely way more important, considering he feels like crawling out of his own skin ever since that god awful conversation with Seabs. They had both fallen asleep on the couch, which completely ruined Patrick’s back, and after they actually became coherent enough to speak to each other, Seabs wrapped Patrick up in a teddy-bear hug and told him that he was sorry about making him uncomfortable and that he was here for him. Patrick may or may not have cried a little bit, but no one needs to know other than him, Seabs, and Duncs (cause god knows that Seabs, the codependent fuck, blabbed to him). He’s felt on edge ever since though, like he needs someone to tell him how to fix all of his problems so he and Jonny can go back to being friends like Duncs and Seabs.

Patrick is shocked, though, to see that Ryan Getzlaf of all people is the Oracle Shawsy brings him to. He thought that maybe Shawsy was going to bring one of the trainers from Anaheim out or maybe a Zamboni driver. He had been planning on telling all the dirty details about the bond to the Oracle, but if it’s a player, there’s no way he can spill everything. Especially not to someone on a rival team.

Shawsy pushes him towards Getzlaf and makes a speedy escape. Patrick curses him silently for leaving him with a Captain Canada because all Canadian captains are obnoxious about their country, including Jonny. Immediately, Getzlaf lunges for his strings, and even though Patrick knows enough about him from Jonny’s Olympics stories, it’s certainly not enough to warrant him touching Patrick’s strings. That’s fucking impolite as hell.

“What the fuck man? Did they not teach you manners in the Great White North?”

Getzlaf rolls his eyes, like he can’t believe Patrick is being this stupid.

“Of course they taught me manners, Kane. We’re not Americans. I can’t get a good read on your strings if I don’t actually touch them okay? I don’t know what Shaw told you about Oracles, but some of them can do readings of your connections too. Which is what I’m going to do.”

Reluctantly, Patrick lets Getzlaf touch them. He runs a finger through like he’s playing a harp before he picks up the blue ones.

“Hmm, nice weight, a good thickness,” Getzlaf says, eyes closed in concentration. “One of these blue ones is a little thinner than the others, likely because of some childhood trauma. Playing through an injury when young perhaps?”

Patrick huffs angrily, even though he hit it spot on. Getzlaf moves to the yellow ones.

“Wow, these are all really strong, like heavy-duty fishing wire strong,” Getzlaf muses.

He grabs Sharpy’s string and tugs gently, just lightly enough that he won’t come running to find Patrick.

“This one, is tricky. You’ll be life-long friends, it’s that fishing wire consistency, but it might be stretched thin sometime in the future. 2015 maybe?”

Patrick wants to know more, to maybe try and prevent it, but Getzlaf’s hand is moving towards the red one now, and he’ll be fucked if he doesn’t get anything out of him about that. But before Ryan hits the red string, his hand stops above his purple string and yanks.

“Woah, Kane, what the hell is going on with your purple string? It’s like stretchy, moldable. It’s like the strings were confused about who to connect to,” Getzlaf says, almost awestruck. “It’s going two separate ways. The connection here is super weak too, indicating that there’s some sort of mental barrier. Is it because it connects to a guy?”

Getzlaf pauses and scrunches his face up, as if he had just smelt something bad.

“No, you’re not embarrassed about the fact that it’s a guy. The strings are saying it’s because they may have connected this one to the wrong guy. Hmmm, shouldn’t be a problem though.”

Getzlaf brushes it off like it’s nothing, but Patrick is reeling. What the hell? The wrong guy? Who else could he have fallen in love with? Patrick tries to think. There was that guy back on Honeybaked and that girl in Ann Arbor when he was in the USNTDP. Maybe some girl from Buffalo? There really aren’t that many options though. The only people he’s ever known that he’s been drop-dead in love with have been Sam and Jonny.

But Patrick’s train of thought gets broken because Getzlaf has finally, finally moved towards his red string. For this one, Getzlaf tugs hard once again, as if tugging any lighter or harder will make something happen. Even though he, like everyone, knows you can’t break strings.

“Holy shit Kane, this one’s as thick as a water pipe. I’ve never felt a bond this intense before but what—” Getzlaf stops talking abruptly, and his face gets tight like he’s in physical pain just from touching Patrick’s string.

“What’s wrong?” Patrick asks, concerned that Getzlaf is going to pass out before he gets a reading on the string.

“What’s wrong? It defies the laws of nature, that’s what’s wrong. It goes from hella thick to thin as fuck right in the middle, and it’s two-toned. I’ve never felt anything like this before, like the entire bond is trapped on your side, and he’s getting nothing. It’s backed up like a toilet.”

Getzlaf pops his eyes open and lets go of Patrick’s red string like it’s burned him. At least he answered the question about whether or not Jonny was feeling anything, If all the emotions were stuck on Patrick’s side, Jonny wasn’t feeling anything but friendship towards him. Which is depressing, but nothing new.

“So, clearly you needed to see me because you have no idea what to do with the two-toned one,” Getzlaf says, collecting himself.

Patrick nods vigorously.

“Actually, I was hoping you could help me get rid of it.”

Patrick has been thinking about getting rid of his red string for a while. He knows that the only way to have it be gone is to snap the bond completely, but he figures that if he can just find a way to get it back to yellow, he’ll be okay again. Patrick had thought at one point that losing the bond would be the absolute worst thing that could ever happen to him, but he didn’t realize that keeping the bond open would be this miserable. Every day, he feels like he’s being stabbed by a million different knives just from being around Jonny and seeing everything that he does. He goes home bone-weary and tired because he spends all day holding the bond back from snapping into place because he loves Jonny enough that he won’t subject him to a future that he doesn’t want. He can’t sleep, he can’t eat, he can’t do anything without Jonny around, and even he recognizes that it isn’t healthy, and if he doesn’t change something, he is literally going to die. It’s going to suck balls when it snaps, and he’s probably going to have to start going to therapy after, but it’s the only way to make sure that neither he nor Jonny suffers from this fucking inconvenient red string. Getzlaf can give him the information he needs to snap it.

Getzlaf slaps him. Which, what the fuck? No one does that to Patrick fucking Kane. Patrick slams his foot into Getzlaf’s ankle. Fucker deserves it.

“What the hell man? I thought we were cool!”

“We are cool,” Getzlaf says, clutching his ankle. “I slapped you to get that ridiculous idea out of your head. I get it, you can’t do anything when he’s not around, he’s the Sun to your Earth. But you seriously cannot force me to give you the information to break it. There’s no going back when you do, and you’ll regret it for the rest of your life.”

Immediately, Patrick blurts out, “Why should I trust you on that?”

Getzlaf shoves a finger in his face, and Patrick can clearly tell something is up because his hand is shaking like crazy.

“You need to trust me because I did the same thing when I was 18, and I’ve hated myself every second of every day for it. You think the separation anxiety is bad now? You’ll be crying at minimum 8 hours a day from a migraine, even if you see them all the time. It’ll be like a concussion but a hundred times worse. Patrick, you only ever get one red string, and they’re fucking special. They aren’t meant to be broken.”

“Don’t you think I know that?” Patrick snaps. “I just—”

And he falls into Ryan’s arms, overcome with emotion. Ryan catches Patrick with a soft oomph but seems to understand that he needs this and holds on. And Patrick really, really does. He hasn’t had human contact outside of hockey in days, and he’s crying for probably what is the 9th or 10th time today. He understands now why teenage girls are always so angsty in red string movies. It’s pretty intense, especially when he’s holding back weeks of pent up emotion. 

Patrick feels fucking terrible all the time. He feels like he’s being torn apart and being stitched back together like a rag doll everyday. Jonny rips up his insides everyday by being ignorant to the bond, but at the same time, he’s the only one who can reaffirm Patrick and put him back to normal. The worst part is, Jonny has no idea. Patrick is fucking destroying himself over and over everyday holding back everything so Jonny doesn’t suffer, and Jonny’s practically oblivious. It fucking cuts that he doesn’t notice. He really just fucking wishes that Jonny felt something. Even though he has accepted that Jonny isn’t going to love him, it would be nice for his best friend to pay attention to how much he’s hurting. But no, just because it doesn’t “affect his hockey”, Jonny could care less. Most of the time, Patrick feels like Jonny is halfway across the fucking world from him. He doesn’t feel like Patrick’s best friend anymore, just a stranger on the end of Patrick’s red string.

They’re so not best friends right now that Jonny doesn’t even touch him anymore, not even in hockey. He avoids hugging Patrick directly when they celly together and always pulls his hand away when Patrick tries to go in for a fist bump. It’s like Patrick doesn’t even know who Jonny, as his best friend, is anymore. Which is horrible, because Patrick doesn't know who HE is without Jonny.

Patrick’s sobbing loudly now, and he’s almost worried that one of the staff will see them hugging and assume the worst. But he needs this more than ever, and if Jonny won’t touch him, Patrick is going to get it from whoever he can. After all, this is how it is going to have to be for the rest of his life because Jonny will never ever see him as anything more than a friend. Or if Jonny decides to dump him all together and stop being friends with him.

“He’s never going to love me,” Patrick whispers into the crook of Ryan’s neck, where his face is nestled. “I know it.”

Ryan hums sympathetically.

“If he’s not going to love you in the way you want, at least let him love you a little. It won’t help if you have a backed-up bond. Just try and act normal. Right now, you’re acting like a large ball of angst .”

Patrick sniffle-laughs a little bit and lets go of Ryan. It’s nice to have someone who understands, in a way, even though it’s not the same between him and Jonny as Ryan and Corey (and it’s obviously Corey on the other side of Ryan’s broken bond, no question). Maybe one day they’ll end up starting a “One-Sided Bond” club with some other players. But for now, this tiny act of empathy is enough to get Patrick through.

“What. The. Fuck.”

And, oh shit, that’s Jonny.

Jonny storms into the dark hallway, fuming so much that Patrick can practically see the steam rising out of his ears. He almost yanks Patrick’s shoulder out of its socket in his haste to get his arm away from Ryan, like Ryan is contaminating it or something. And then, he pushes Patrick behind him as if he’s trying to protect him and gets all up in Ryan’s grill.

“Get the fuck away from Patrick Getzy. I don’t care if Canada depends on you, I will deck you here and now if you even think about touching him again.”

That’s pretty hot, Patrick’s not going to lie. But it gets stifled by the fact that Jonny isn’t protecting Patrick because he’s a possessive person or because Patrick is his. Or even just because Patrick is his friend. He’s just doing it because Jonny thinks the team’s secrets are being corrupted by Ryan.

Speaking of Ryan, he and Jonny are now arguing in rapid French that Patrick understands none of. He hears his name multiple times though and even catches an “Il n’est pas mon chum!” from Jonny. Finally, Ryan gives up and throws his hands in the air as he signals a “call me” to Patrick, which just seems to infuriate Jonny more. He’s still cursing in French to Ryan’s back, even as he hightails it out of there.

“Tu es une osti de vindage! Une osti de vindage!” Jonny screams as Ryan disappears down the hallway. He tacks on a mumbled “Tabernak” too when he realizes Ryan isn’t listening to him anymore.

When Jonny’s finally done with his temper tantrum, he frantically turns to Patrick, checking his arms and shoulders for any bruises. Any negative thing Patrick is thinking in the moment is drowned out by the bond singing “Jonny’s touching me, Jonny’s touching me, oh my god, oh my god, oh my god.” He hates it and loves it at the same time. Loves it because it makes the bond hum with happiness and makes Patrick feel floaty and bubbly, and hates it because he doesn’t know how much longer he’ll be allowed to have this. He doesn’t know how much longer he’ll be allowed to be Jonny’s friend.

“Peeksy, are you okay?”

Jonny’s checking his legs now, and ankles, and what the hell, even his armpits.

“I’m fine you obsessive fucker,” Patrick says, trying to pull his arms and legs back into himself to not make the situation awkward, the bond whining as he struggles against Jonny’s grip. “How did you even find me?”

Jonny stops touching Patrick, which, of course, gets a reaction from the bond, cause it didn’t agree to Jonny not touching him, so why did he let Jonny do that? Patrick chooses to ignore it, and its oddly weird urge to pet Jonny’s hair.

“Well, you were tugging on the string, and you usually don’t pull that hard, so I thought you were in trouble,” Jonny says, rubbing a sheepish hand onto the back of his neck. “It took me a hell of a long time to find you. What were you doing here with Getzy anyways?”

Patrick can’t tell Jonny the truth, that much he knows. It would just make things worse. It would probably send Jonny into a self-deprecating spiral about how he should help Patrick out. Jonny would probably bond with him right there out of guilt. And Patrick can’t have Jonny suffering like that. But at the same time. he can’t lie to Jonny either, not if he wants to be well enough for the game. Fun fact, according to Google, lying to your bond partner can make you feel sick to your stomach. No wonder Patrick has been feeling nauseous for weeks.

“Just had some stuff to talk about. Strings you know?”

Patrick hopes that that’s enough to keep Jonny from asking any more questions. He can be a nosy fucker sometimes, but he’s polite enough to know that asking about the strings is crossing a boundary.

Patrick makes an aborted move to go back to the locker room, but Jonny stops him with a light press of his hand on Patrick’s shoulder. It still sends shivers down Patrick’s spine regardless.

“Are you and Getzy,” Jonny asks, with a perfect poker face, while simultaneously waving his hand in the air. “Like, red string connected?”

Patrick tries to laugh, but it comes out as more of a sob. Of course, Jonny would notice him and Ryan getting close, even though he can’t notice how infatuated Patrick is with him.

“No, of course not, that’d be gross.”

Patrick makes a face just to hammer the point home.

Jonny;’s face relaxes and just like in St. Louis, Patrick has to resist the urge to touch all of his little facial imperfections. It’s just that his laugh lines and nose scrunches are so cute, and Patrick kind of wants to lick into all of Jonny’s scars with his tongue. Wow, he really needs to get this bond under control.

“Good,” Jonny says, sounding relieved as he grabs Patrick’s hand and starts pulling him back to the locker room. “Because you’re mine.”

Patrick can’t help but think that it’s nothing but a lie.

* * *

Over the next few weeks, Patrick takes Ryan’s advice. He tries his best to be as normal as possible, and while he still can’t be in a room alone with Jonny, he does gather up enough courage to have a conversation without completely breaking down afterwards. Maybe he’ll be okay enough to play video games with Jonny in his condo in a few weeks. Jonny seems like he’s noticing that Patrick’s hurting now, occasionally asking if Patrick needs anything for his headaches or if he wants a strawberry smoothie. Patrick thinks that it means he’s doing a good job. The bond isn’t looking as bad anymore, having gone back to being more like rope and not a water pipe, which Patrick assumes means it’s healing. Which is fucking awesome. They’re becoming more comfortable around each other now, more like they were before Madison.

That doesn’t mean that he doesn’t feel absolutely gutted every time Jonny picks up after a win though. It doesn’t help that Jonny used to never pick up when they were on the road, but now that Patrick isn’t his roommate anymore, he picks up all the time.

They play their last game of the season in St. Louis, and even though they lose, the whole team goes out to celebrate the end of the regular season. After all, the playoffs start in a few days, and there will be absolutely no time to party during that. Some of the guys from St. Louis join them because even if the fanbases hate each other, it doesn’t mean that the players have to hate each other too.

But with St. Louis Blues players, comes the ever so eloquent Broshie, who spends the first hour and a half they’re at the club draping himself all over Jonny and gauding him into taking cheap shots of tequila. And usually, that wouldn’t phase Patrick, because that’s just how Broshie is. What actually shocks him is that Jonny actually listens, downing shot after shot, when Patrick knows Jonny hates tequila and much prefers whiskey on the rocks. But Jonny always becomes the frattiest frat bro in the history of frat bros when Broshie is around, so Patrick really shouldn’t be surprised.

After a while, the rookies try to pull Patrick onto the dance floor, begging him to do the Kaner Shuffle. Normally Patrick would be up for it because the Kaner Shuffle is bomb, but Jonny’s talking up some blonde at the bar, and he’s feeling kind of nauseous. He ends up at the old-marrieds booth, where all of them are too busy texting their significant others to notice Patrick. Patrick desperately wishes he had anything close to that. Instead, he gets to watch Jonny run his hand down the length of the nameless blonde’s arm (which what the fuck, is that Jonny’s go-to move?) and drag her out of the club, completely oblivious to the bond. As always. Patrick doesn’t even know why he’s expecting anything anymore. Just because he and Jonny are pretty normal now, it doesn’t mean that Jonny loves him, or will ever love him. Patrick needs to keep reminding himself this because if he doesn’t, he’ll start hoping again. And when that hope gets crushed, he will be too.

“PKane! My ‘Murican bro!,” Broshie yells obnoxiously into Patrick’s ear, as he squished in next to him. “Dude, what are you doing with the marrieds? Live a little!”

Patrick wants to push Broshie out of the booth more than anything right now. He’s not in the mood to deal with Broshie, especially when it seems like Jonny and the girl hadn’t made it out of the club after all and are now making out in a booth at the front of the club. Patrick resists the urge to puke. It’s okay. Jonny is allowed to touch whoever he wants, and it’s totally not cool for Patrick to be jealous of some groupie (who strangely looks a little bit like him). Jonny isn’t obligated to like him, and it’s not like Jonny is into dudes anyways. He’d probably be creeped out if he knew that Patrick was like balls to the walls in love with him. And Patrick has been trying his best to be normal, so he has to suppress the urge to go over there and mark his territory, even though the bond is being crazy and suggesting it.

Unfortunately, he’s been staring at them for too long, because Broshie follows his line of sight and lets out a wolf-whistle when he sees who’s picking up.

“Woooo, JT is scoring tonight!” Broshie hollers, as if they’re the only ones in the club and a hundred people hadn’t just heard that someone named JT was doing the deed. “Get it!”

Ughhh, and he says it in the douchiest Southern accent that Patrick has ever heard, and he needs to get out of here now. Helplessly, he looks towards the rest of the booth but finds all but Duncs gone. And Duncs is sitting at the end of the booth, butt halfway off of the seat like he’s about to make his escape. Patrick groans. He’s going to have to be stuck with Broshie for at least the next hour. It’s too early for anyone who isn’t an old-married or picking up to be leaving without it being suspicious.

Broshie’s actually fucking taking a picture of Jonny and the girl now, and no. Patrick will let a lot of things slide when it comes to Broshie, mainly because he doesn’t want to deal with him, but violating Jonny’s privacy is crossing a line. What if Broshie’s phone gets hacked or he loses it? Patrick can already see the Deadspin article, “Are Jonathan Toews’s Late Night Escapades Affecting His On-Ice Play?” Patrick isn’t going to let that happen. He can’t let Jonny’s reputation get tarnished. Not like his.

“That’s rude,” Patrick says in a Jonny-esque monotone while snatching Broshie’s phone out of his hand and deleting the photo.

“What? Jonny’s hot okay? What if my girl and I want to get it on to that?”

Patrick rolls his eyes, and seriously questions how Broshie even has a girlfriend in the first place, when he says shit like that and takes body shots off of every willing person.

“Plus,” Broshie says as he places his face in his hands like he’s admiring Jonny’s makeout skills or something. “It’s not like I haven’t tapped that ass.”

Patrick’s suddenly really glad that Duncs had chosen to leave, because this is not a conversation he would want to hear.

It’s not a secret in the NHL that Broshie is so, so ridiculously bisexual that it’s funny. Patrick’s fairly sure that he’d slept with half the Capitals and Penguins roster before he finished his sophomore year in the League. So it’s not weird that Broshie slept with someone in his UND days. It’s weird that it’s Jonny because the one time Patrick had asked Jonny about his time at UND, he had mainly said it was boring and nothing really happened. He had specifically mentioned that he didn’t have a girlfriend there… oh. Patrick guesses that Broshie doesn’t really count as a girlfriend.

“I— really?”

Broshie nods, sincerely.

“Yuppers PKane! He gives the best rim job from here to Minnesota. It’s awesome,” Broshie says, waggling his eyebrows “seductively” towards Patrick.

Patrick gets the absolutely disgusting image of Jonny with his tongue in Broshie’s ass stuck in his head. But then, the bond changes it so that he’s the one being tongue-fucked by Jonny, and he’s actually getting kind of hard just from thinking about it. He shuts down that though, because 1) getting hard in front of Broshie would warrant chirping from him for life, and 2) because Jonny wouldn’t want to go down on Patrick anyways, because he’s obviously so not into him.

It’s just another dagger to the heart finding out that Jonny’s bi. Red strings are strange like that sometimes, they tie you to people that you sometimes aren’t attracted to at first, but you learn to love them no matter how they identify. Patrick had assumed in the beginning that even though Jonny didn’t love him now because he’s a guy, he would learn to when his side of the string turned red. When Patrick finally gave up on the idea of it turning red, he didn’t automatically blame it on the fact that he’s a guy. He simply chalked it up to the fact that Jonny thought Patrick was immature, and simply not good enough for him. But when Ryan told him to make it normal, Patrick had sort of used the fact that Jonny was “straight” to push himself through conversations with him, just to make it easier. It’s a cruel fate now, though, because the reason Jonny doesn’t love him isn’t that he doesn’t like guys. It’s just because Patrick is seriously just too pathetic for Jonny to handle. Wonderful.

It’s not like he didn’t expect it though. Jonny’s mature. He’s not going to want to saddle himself to Patrick, who seems to get into messes faster than Jonny can take a face-off. There was Madison last summer and the cab driver a few years before that. Everything Patrick touches turns to ash. It’s a damn miracle he hasn’t managed to ruin the lives of any of his teammates yet, but it’s probably only a matter of time. He wouldn’t blame Jonny if he doesn’t love Patrick. Patrick doesn’t even love Patrick right now.

“PKane, are you jealous?” Broshie says after Patrick doesn’t respond to his rimming comment (which makes sense, because no one would want to answer that).

“Jonny and I,” Patrick starts, before stopping abruptly to swallow the sob that threatens to escape his mouth. “It’s not like that.”

It must show on his face how absolutely in love with Jonny he is though, because Broshie goes from frat bro to therapist in a matter of seconds and wraps his arms around Patrick in a drunken embrace. Patrick pushes his hands away though, because gross, it’s Broshie, and because his hands are sticky from when he shotgunned a beer earlier like a college kid .

“Nooooo, nooot youuuu Peekaboooo!” Broshie exclaims, petting Patrick’s hair. “It’ll be okay.”

Patrick wishes that were true. He still counts it as a win though, cause he doesn’t immediately start crying as soon as Broshie says that, unlike when he was with Sharpy, Seabs, and Ryan. He thinks that means things are going back to normal, even if he can already feel another sleepless night building in his head just from Jonny kissing that girl. He really hopes things go back to normal soon.

“Yeah, I know, but it’s never been like that anyway,” Patrick says, shrugging. “It’s always just been buddies.”

Broshie looks at him like he’s crazy, even though he's the one with his arms curled awkwardly around Patrick.

“Really?” Broshie asks like he can’t believe it. “Cause Jon used to call me up all the time and tell me about this cute little blonde winger that he wanted to, and I quote “put on his knees so he can suck me off.” So it’s definitely not just buddies for him.”

Patrick wants to go back in time and wack his past self in the head, so he opens his eyes and sees what’s right in front of him. If Broshie’s really telling the truth, Patrick could have had everything he wants now since rookie year. But no, the string and bond decided that now was the ideal time to give Patrick his happily ever after, when Jonny is out here sleeping with anything that walks. Even if Patrick wants what Broshie said to be a possibility now, he knows it’s not. Jonny definitely decided in between then and now that Patrick would never be good enough for him, considering Jonny can’t even look at him some days, even now that they’re good. Broshie’s living in some pipe-dream, and he’s just trying to make Patrick feel better.

“Keywords “used to”. Nah man, it isn’t like that anymore.”

No matter how much Patrick desperately wants it to be.

Broshie gives him a sympathetic look and smashes a sloppy kiss onto Patrick’s cheek and finally seems like he’s going to go away. At last, Patrick can have his freedom. It’s a good thing too because he definitely spilled way too much about his feelings to Broshie. He hopes he doesn’t tell Jonny.

“Oh well, I hope it works out for you two,” Broshie mumbles into Patrick’s cheek because he is still kissing Patrick.

Broshie slides out of the booth, as quickly as he came, and Patrick starts to get up too. He feels really drained and just wants to go back to the hotel and try for at least 3 hours of sleep. Before he can bolt for the door though, Broshie pulls at his purple string. Which, what the fuck, rude as hell.

“Gagner huh?” Broshie says, releasing the string before Patrick has an opportunity to punch him in the face for touching his strings.

Patrick blinks rapidly because what the hell, how does Broshie even know that? You know what, he doesn’t even want to know. He turns away from Broshie and starts walking towards the exit. He’s way too far past his yearly Broshie tolerance to care about this.

“I’m a Seer!” Broshie sing-songs to Patrick’s back. “And hey, give Jon a chance! He’s a good guy, just really stupid sometimes!”

Patrick keeps this in mind when he can’t fall asleep because Jonny’s headboard is banging against the wall between their rooms.

* * *

The playoffs go just as well as Patrick had planned, at least in the first round. They take down the Wild in five and Jonny has no choice but to talk to him. It’s fucking awesome, even if Jonny continues to pick up the whole time. He usually stops by the second round anyway, and Patrick is trying to be optimistic and keep what Broshie had said in mind. It works, most of the time. There was just that one night, after the only loss of the series, when Jonny walked into Patrick’s room with a girl by accident because Patrick left his door open. Jonny had thought it his own room and apologized profusely before dragging the girl out. Patrick’s sobs drowned out the sex noises from the other side of the wall, but no one needs to know that but him.

Like the stage of Patrick’s current, non-existent love-life, the second round is absolute shit. While the feeling of winning the first game of the series at home is nothing short of fucking amazing each and every time, the Madhouse going completely insane when they score, they drop the next three games to the Wings in spectacularly terrible fashions. And even though Patrick scores in Game 2 and 3, he still feels constantly sick to his stomach and weary. Likely side-effects of the bond, because Patrick would be able to feel the self-deprecation coming off of Jonny even if he was just passing him on the street. It rolls off of him in waves, like he’s Hades with nothing more than a blue flame for hair. The whole team is feeling it, not just Patrick. It’s like a cloud washes over the whole locker room, and suddenly, nobody wants to hang out anymore. All they want is to go home and sleep and forget about the embarrassing losses.

It sucks for Patrick 1) because he’s getting the residue of Jonny’s self-hatred (which always fucking hurts) and 2) because he has nothing to distract him from that. He just sits on the couch and thinks about why Jonny doesn’t want him. They’re probably further away from being friends now that they were before the Ryan Getzlaf thing. Jonny is consistently pissed off at him all the time, so often that Patrick can sometimes hear it ringing through the bond. “I hate him, I hate him, I hate him,” is what the bond relays to Patrick. He isn’t going to lie and say it doesn’t hurt. 

It all comes to a head after the third loss in a row, in fucking Detroit of all places. Jonny comes back to the hotel fuming and locks the adjoining door to Patrick’s room so loudly that Patrick actually spends a full five minutes staring at it, the click of the lock buzzing in his ears. It fucking sucks, cause all Patrick ever wants to do is help Jonny out. But Jonny won’t let him, and Patrick won’t let himself do it without permission either. They’re stuck in a twisted Catch 22, and if one of them doesn’t do something, ANYTHING, to break them out of it, Patrick is going to have a mental breakdown.

Because they’re on the cusp of getting eliminated, Erica flys out to Chicago for Game 5. Originally, she hadn’t been planning to fly out with the rest of his family until the Western Conference Final (because Patrick had been confident that they’d make it until then), but she had insisted on now, saying that she needed to “whip his butt into shape”. Patrick doesn’t argue her on it, mainly because he hasn’t seen her since last summer and because he’s feeling pretty shitty about the whole Jonny thing and needs someone to vent to.

Not that Erica knows about the Jonny thing, and Patrick certainly isn’t going to tell her. But he’s practically bursting out of his own skin with the secret by the time she arrives in Chicago, and he figures he can just sidestep it. Tell her some, but not all. It’s the longest he’s ever gone without telling at least one of his sisters about a secret, and while he wishes he could talk to Sharpy, Shawsy, or Seabs about it, they’re all busy with playoffs stuff.

Erica (and all of his sisters) are better than all of them anyways, and telling her would probably be the emotional release Patrick needs. If he can’t tell Jonny, Erica is the second-best choice. But he’s not going to tell her that either, because she’d exorcise him for thinking anyone was better than her.

So that’s his plan. He’s going to tell her about how he’s been really feeling awful lately because someone he’s absolutely in love with is really absolutely not in love with him. It’s a very good plan in Patrick’s opinion. Safe, low risk. He knows how to leave out enough details, so she knows enough that she won’t ask more questions, but at the same time, she won’t know who it is. It’s simple enough. But it all goes to shit when Erica visits the locker room before morning practice the day of Game 5 and announces, “So, Patty, your red string connects to Jonny,” like it’s a fact in a middle-school history book.

It leaves Patrick gaping at her, because what the fuck? Before he can ask her any follow up, Jonny is walking over to his stall and worming Erica into a headlock, giving her a firm nougie.

“Hey EK! Didn’t know you were coming down,” Jonny says as Erica tries futilely to bat his hand off of her head. “How’s college? Are you finally smarter than me?”

Patrick hears an “I’ve always been smarter than you, UND dumbass!” before Jonny finally releases her and goes back to his stall.

It hurts watching Jonny act like this towards Erica. His sisters have always liked Jonny more than they naturally should have, claiming that Jonny was Patrick, but better. It had never annoyed him, because he’s fucking great and he knows it. But now, Erica and Jonny teasing each other and acting like it’s nothing new is just another reminder of what Patrick wants, but will never be able to have. He wants to bring Jonny home for dinner one day and introduce him to his parents as his boyfriend, not just a friend. He wants Jonny to see his childhood room and bake pies with his mom. He wants Jonny to be around to critique his sisters’ boyfriends with Patrick, and he wants the picture of perfect domesticity, a house with a white picket fence and the 2.5 children. It’s insanely cliche and probably not a good look for a “macho” man like him, but he just wants everything he’s never going to get. And it sucks. It just sucks. There’s no way around it.

“How do you know? About me and Jonny?” Patrick asks as Erica finishes making her rounds and says hi to all the guys. “Is it that obvious?”

Erica snorts but still makes sure that Jonny isn’t within earshot. Patrick loves that he has such great sisters.

“Patty,” Erica whispers. “The whole family’s known since you came home from Junior Flyers one day raving about this boy who never smiled named Jonathan Toe-es. We placed bets immediately that he was your purple string. Imagine our surprise when you come home after the draft and tell us that it’s actually Sam fucking Gagner.”

“Plus,” Erica says cheerfully, turning on happy like a switch, like she didn’t just rock Patrick’s world by telling him that his family made bets on his strings. “It’s so fucking clear that I can’t believe he hasn’t noticed it yet. In this three minute conversation, you’ve already looked at him 36 separate times.”

Fuck Erica, that’s unconscious. It’s not like he’s trying to make himself suffer by constantly staring at Jonny and desperately wishing he could touch the edges of Jonny’s crooked smile. Because he’s not. In fact, he spends so much time and energy avoiding eye contact with Jonny that he doesn’t know how he has any left to use up to just look at him.

“It’s not—we’re not—it’s not red on his side Erica.”

Erica looks genuinely shocked, and Patrick is so, so glad that everyone else seems to be minding their own business because if someone had seen her with her mouth open and eyes wide like that, there would’ve been questions asked.

“What?” Erica whisper-yells. “Really? Because he looks at you like he wants to take you to bed every single second of every day.”

Patrick rolls his eyes. Is there no one in his life who doesn’t think that Jonny isn’t in love with him? He’s gotten this lecture from Seabs and Sharpy, and had probably the most awkward conversation ever with Duncs about it. Can’t anyone just open their eyes and see what’s right in front of them?

“Wow,” Patrick says sarcastically. “Then why is he sleeping with everything that walks?”

Erica’s face hardens, no longer confused.

“You want me to go punch him for you? I can pack one. That’s shitty as fuck to do to your bondmate.”

Patrick appreciates the sentiment, but he thinks if she tried that, Jonny would deck her in seconds. Plus, he doesn’t want Jonny knowing about the bond anyways, and he’s sure to find out if Erica does that.

“No, don’t. I’ve accepted it’s never going to happen, and that’s just how it is.”

Patrick doesn’t know though what he’s going to do when Jonny finds some girl or guy to marry. He’ll probably have to be there, stand next to Jonny as one of his groomsmen, and watch as everything he’s ever wanted in life be taken away. He’ll be there when the happy couple buys their first house and has their first kid. He’ll be Uncle Peeks, just like he is to Maddie. He’ll have to watch all of his friends go through it and be happy, even when he knows he’ll never have that type of happiness without Jonny. 

Stupidly, he wonders if he should just tell Jonny about the bond right now. Hopefully, it would make the future pain hurt less. But while he thinks he can tell Jonny, and walk away if he says no, Patrick knows he can’t. He’s too selfish, unlike Jonny. If Patrick told him right now about the bond, he would latch onto Patrick, no questions asked. He would jump into it headfirst, and ignore the consequences. Patrick wouldn’t be able to turn away. He would want as much of Jonny as he possibly can get. But Patrick isn’t selfish enough to watch Jonny be miserable every day of his life because he got into something he could never get out of. Patrick’s a terrible, awful person sometimes, and he’s not going to pull oh-so perfect Jonny into that mess. It wouldn’t be fair for him to, especially to his best-friend. So, he’s not going to tell Jonny about the bond. It’s a secret he’s going to take to the grave if he has to.

Erica pulls him into a side-hug, and Patrick leans his head on her shoulder. The bond hurts a little less with her around. Patrick thinks he might be able to live with that for the rest of his life. If he can just spend it with other people he loves and cares about, he might not even need Jonny’s love. He’ll be able to survive. But in his heart, he knows that survival is worlds away from where he could be with Jonny. Living.

“If he’s doing that,” Erica mumbles into his curls. “Maybe it’s time to give him up.”

“Like I haven’t been trying,” Patrick snaps, because how can she seriously not understand that?

“Have you?” she asks, her voice filled with quiet anger. “Because from how I see it, you’re out here obsessing about how much Jonny picks up, while Jonny’s out there actually fucking picking up and finding his happiness.”

“I—I’m never going to find the happiness that I would have with Jonny,” Patrick whines.

“Then either man up and tell him about the bond or find happiness somewhere else,” Erica yells suddenly. “Because newsflash Patrick! Most people don’t find yours and Jonny’s “ultimate happiness”. They settle for whatever they can get.”

Erica pushes his head off of her shoulder, and dramatically storms out of the locker room to go, god knows where. Luckily, the only other person in the locker room is Crow, who is just putting on the last of his gear. He gapes at Patrick, but doesn’t say anything. And thank goodness for that, because Patrick might’ve broken down if he had. He hates fighting with his sisters.

She’s right though. A lot of people never find the happiness he aches for. There are so many who are way unluckier than him. There are people who have bondmates halfway across the world and suffer from far worse separation anxiety than him. There are people who never meet their bondmates and go through life as a glass half-full. There are people who have their bondmates ripped away from them in their sleep because their other half died fighting for their country. It could be worse than it is. He gets to see Jonny everyday for at least another ten years of his life if they sign to the Blackhawks again (which they will), and afterwards, Jonny’s still going to be his best-friend. Even if it will hurt being around him, at least Patrick will still have that option. That confidence that he will always be around. That’s so much more than so many people get. So why can’t he pretend and find himself some happiness? Just because it’s less, doesn’t mean it’s not happiness all the same.

“Hey,” Crow says, taking a seat in the stall next to him and snapping Patrick out of his daze. “I don’t know what just happened there, but I want you to know that I’m here for you.”

He places his blocker on Patrick’s shoulder, and Patrick doesn’t even feel the need to cry. He feels surprisingly okay for once, like he’s not going to ruin everything and make a mess. He feels like maybe he can be the one to fix them. He feels like all the broken little pieces of him lying on the floor at Jonny’s feet waiting for him to fix them have finally gotten tired of waiting and have decided to fix themselves. Patrick feels like he can fix himself, Jonny or no Jonny. 

Patrick lets Crow guide him out of the locker room and to the bench, where Q rips into him for being “unnecessarily late”. Patrick apologizes, but doesn’t really feel all that sorry. He needed that wake-up call, bad. He’d rather skip practice than not get that.

Patrick, with all of his broken pieces welding themselves together, steps on the ice, and skates.

And for the first time since he woke up in that hotel room in LA, he doesn’t look at Jonny once.

* * *

Patrick watches it go down in slow motion. The Kings are pinching hard, but as soon as Williams misses the pass, Patrick knows. Bicksy strips the puck away from #26 and chops it up the ice towards Jonny, and Patrick skates harder than he ever has in his life. He knows he’s going to absolutely winded after this but he doesn’t even care because he and Jonny have a 2 on 1. There’s a guy trailing behind him and a guy trying to protect the passing lane, fucking hell, Jonny has the puck. And when Jonny has the puck, he does things with it. Whether he passes it to Patrick or shoots it himself, it won’t matter.

They are winning this game.

Time comes to a near stop as Patrick sees Jonny fake the shot out of the corner of his eye and feels the puck hit his stick, from a perfectly placed pass from Jonny underneath the triangle of #7’s stick. He doesn’t even have to think before he shoots it.

It all comes back to Patrick at once, the noise of the crowd and Chelsea Dagger christening his hat trick, and he slides to his knees as he pulls out the heartbreaker celly that he did in Vancouver a few years back. Someone from the bench comes up behind him and hugs him like he’s in the Titanic before slapping a slobbery kiss onto his cheek. It feels like Shawsy, but he pays no mind to who it is because, fuck. He just sent the Hawks to the final.

The guys are all jumping off of the bench now, and tackling him to the ice in a huge dogpile. Yet somehow, through all the chaos and the grown men squishing Patrick to the ice, Jonny finds him. Immediately, Jonny drops down next to Patrick and pats his glove on Patrick’s helmet softly. He’s screaming something at Patrick, but Patrick can’t make out his voice above the crowd’s and everyone else’s elation.

“Great fucking goal Kaner! I love you!” Jonny yells loud enough for Patrick to hear this time, before he’s pulled up by Sharpy to give the other guys hugs.

He tries not to overthink it. He really does. It’s just a heat of the moment thing. No big deal. Jonny’s probably said a million different hockey “I love yous” in his career so far. He’ll probably say a million more. Patrick’s nothing new or special to him. He’s a friend. A teammate.

But Patrick feels like it’s different somehow. The way Jonny said it. Like he was so sure of it that it was something he felt way deep down in his soul. All the times Patrick had imagined it, it had never sounded like that. Like Jonny had waited for this moment for his entire life, and he’s so, so glad that Patrick is here with him.

Like Patrick had been Jonny’s before he had even properly met him.

Patrick clamps his hope down, hard. That’s insane. Jonny could never love him. That fact is more true than any stat you could find on NHL.com.

It doesn’t make Erica’s words vibrate through his skull any less guiltily though, even as he lies down in his fucking lonely as hell bed after the game and tries futilely to get some semblance of sleep. He still believes in them, honestly. He’s not going to go back to spiralling just because Jonny told him that he loved him at the end of a hockey game, when emotions were running high and he didn’t even mean it. Patrick’s happy now, and he’s determined to keep it like that. He’s accepted that while he can get happiness from Jonny, he can’t be Patrick’s only source. That’s insanely, unhealthily codependent.

Still, he can’t stop wishing that what Jonny said was real.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading!
> 
> **Translations:**
> 
> Il n'est pas mon chum! - He's not my boyfriend
> 
> Une osti de vindage - A slightly more offensive way to say "you're garbage"
> 
> Tabernak - A variation of a Quebecois "fuck"
> 
> Again, next chapter should be up in a week or two depending on motivation and time I have to write.


	3. Red

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here it is! The final chapter. Thank you for all the support on the last chapter, I really appreciate it! I hope that this is the ending y'all were waiting for!

* * *

_“Losing him was blue like I’ve never known_

_Missing him was dark grey, all alone_

_Forgetting him was like tryna know somebody you’ve never met_

_But loving him was red.”_

**_-Red, Taylor Swift_ **

* * *

Even though Boston sweeps Pittsburgh before the Hawks beat the Kings in five, the League still mandates them a few days off before the Final officially starts. Of course, Q doesn’t really believe in that, so they go hardcore at practice daily. It’s like they’re playing a Game 7 every time they do a drill. It’s probably the hardest Q has worked them since the last time they were in the Final. 

By some miracle, Patrick impresses Q enough that he gives him the last day before the game off along with Sharpy, Seabs, Duncs, and Hoss. For some reason, the illustrious captain isn’t a part of the list. Jonny has put his Captain Serious face full on and is being as bossy as ever on the ice, while somehow simultaneously playing some of the best hockey Patrick has ever seen. But Q probably just wants him to stick around to work on motivational speeches, so Patrick doesn’t look into it too much.

He had been planning on spending his day off with his family, who had flown in for the Final, but instead, Sharpy invited him to his house to spend some time with Maddie. Apparently, Maddie had been asking for Uncle Peeks to come over for a playdate for weeks now, but had always been told that he was “busy”. But this morning, Maddie threw “the temper tantrum of the century” according to Sharpy, so Patrick has to make his way over there in the afternoon. Patrick doesn’t know why Sharpy made the excuse that he was “busy”, but he thinks it probably has to do with the fucking godawful mood he had been in the past few weeks. He realizes now that he probably hadn’t been the best friend since he’d gotten his red string, always talking about how sorry about himself he was and how many Jonny issues he had. It wasn’t fair to Duncs, Seabs, Sharpy, or Shawsy to ask them to listen to that all the time. He owed them dinner when the playoffs were all said and done.

Patrick saunters up the Sharps’ front porch a little after three, finally having convinced his sisters that yes, he had other things to do in Chicago than take them shopping again, and no, it wasn’t because he was going to see Jonny. After he had finally caved and told all of them about the Jonny thing, they’d been grilling him consistently, not even stopping after he told them he was pretty much over it.

Probably because it was a lie, but what they don’t know can’t hurt them.

Patrick really is over it though. He doesn’t spend the bulk of his time thinking about Jonny, at least. Sometimes he pops up, usually when he’s jerking off, because Jonny’s hot, okay? Just because they’re not red string tied, doesn’t mean Patrick doesn’t get to appreciate the magnificence of that ass. Aside from that though, Jonny isn’t really a big factor in his life right now. Yeah, he’s always going to be Patrick’s best friend, but Patrick knows for a fact now that he isn’t the key to Patrick’s happiness. It was stupid of him to assume that Jonny would ever be in the first place. Right now, he has more important things to be happy about, like the Final. Like thinking about stomping the Bruins into the dirt. Like being here at Sharpy’s house.

“Thank god you’re here, Peeks,” Sharpy huffs out rapidly, dragging Patrick inside seconds after he rings the doorbell. “I think Maddie would’ve gone crazy if you’d shown up a minute later. She’s already set up tea and stuff in her room.”

Patrick wants to laugh at Sharpy’s terrified face as he says this, but he figures that would be impolite to the host. Maddie wouldn’t appreciate him openly guffawing at her father, no matter how much she agrees that he is a large poophead.

“Yeah, yeah,” Patrick answers, handing Sharpy his coat so he could hang it up. “Love Mads, but you still owe me one. My sisters almost didn’t let me out the door.”

“Yeah, I think I’ll owe you one forever for this,” Sharpy says as he pushes Patrick up the stairs and into Maddie’s room.

“Uncle Peeks!!!” Maddie yells when Patrick finally makes his way up the stairs. “You’re here!”

She practically tackles him in a hug, the princess dress that she’s wearing dragging behind her on the floor. Patrick hugs her back immediately, feeling a rush of affection for the little kid. Even if he’ll never have this for himself, he’ll be able to get it here. He can’t wait to watch Maddie and the next Sharp spawn grow up. It’ll be awesome. Probably not as awesome as it would be if he had his own spawn, but he’s looking for little miracles here.

“Hi Mads! Ready to have some tea?”

Maddie nods rapidly, and pulls Patrick into her room. It looks like Disney Animation puked all over it, with cut up images of princesses on the walls and a Sleeping Beauty canopy bed. There’s a huge collection of princess books on a pink bookshelf in the corner, and DVDs of every single princess movie in existence. It’s over the top, but never say that Sharpy doesn’t spoil his kid. 

Patrick has just the slightest thought of wishing he could have a kid to spoil one day, when the bond bombards him with snapshots of a life he’ll never have. He sees a little boy on Christmas morning with probably the curliest hair he’s seen since himself, and Jonny’s clear brown eyes. He sees a second one, a small and fragile girl being cradled by him in a nursery. He sees the Fake-Him kiss Jonny chastely on the mouth in front of the kids (who are older now) and hears them groan and complain “Papa? Pourquoi est-ce que tu donnes Daddy un baiser?” He hears Jonny’s reply in perfect French “Parce que je peux,” too. He sees himself chasing after the first one, trying to get him to stop running around the house in skates and yelling “Bastien! Tu vas blesser Manon!”. Which, what the fuck. One, he would NEVER let Jonny name their kids something so disgustingly French (Patrick Timothy Kane III is a bomber name), and two, in what world would he ever learn French?

But all of those thoughts are drowned out by the fact that Patrick knows the bond is just being cruel to him. He knows that Jonny doesn’t love him, no matter what his sisters, Duncs, Swabs, Sharpy, or Shawsy say. Patrick isn’t dumb. The bond would’ve connected them together by now, snapped into place if it was meant to be. If Jonny was his one. No, he’s bound to live a life in which Jonny and him are just friends. That has to be enough for Patrick.

“Uncle Peeeeeeeeekksssss” Maddie whines, stretching out the ‘e’. “C’mere.”

Maddie sits him down at the teensy tiny tea table and plants a small tiara on his head. He has almost no leg room, but it doesn’t seem to be an issue because it gets twice as cramped when Maddie draps a huge makeshift skirt made of tulle on his lap. Once she deems him princess-worthy, she pours them both a cup of “tea” because Sharpy isn’t whipped enough that he’ll give his kid actually caffeinated tea. Patrick’s pretty sure it’s just coloured water, which sounds pretty gross, but he sips on it anyways, just to make Maddie happy. It makes her light up, in fact, and she spends the next few minutes telling him about her new daycare, with some questionable grammar. Apparently, she’s made a new friend named Sarah, the teachers gave her cookies for being good, and some idiot named Cale (“Yes Uncle Peeks, liked the grossie lettuce Uncle Jonny liked to eat”) pushed her into a puddle. Patrick’s probably going to have to give the kid a piece of his mind. By having a perfectly civil conversation with him and his parents of course.

“Yeah and so, Cale pusheded me into the puddle and I tolded Ms. Smith and he had to say sorry,” Maddie rambles on. “And then they tolded him that it wasn’t a very niced thing to do and that he needed to careded about how I felted.”

It’s not the most particularly exciting story, but Patrick still wants to hear it. The bond, mean as ever, sends him an image of Patrick comforting Bastien in the kitchen after “A boy was mean to me today at school because I have two Papas.” Patrick quickly blocks it out.

“But I didn’t knows what ‘careded’ means,” Maddie says, as if she was explaining the secret of life. “So I cames home and asked Mommy, and SHE said that it was when you really loveded someone and you wanted them to be happy. Like her and Daddy.”

Patrick nods enthusiastically, wanting more than anything for her to continue the story, so his mind wasn’t filled with thoughts of kids with lisps because they couldn’t figure out how to speak any language but French properly.

“And I knows what loveded means,” Maddie says proudly, puffing out her chest. “So I askeded Mommy to askeded Sarah’s mommy to have Sarah comed over tomorrow. Because I careded about her.”

Maddie refills his teacup, and Patrick hadn’t even realized that he had drunk all of it. Huh, he guesses that coloured water isn’t so bad after all.

“And then Mommy said yes,” Maddie goes on, smiling.

But then, Maddie’s face scrunched up, like she wasn’t sure what to do next. And no, Patrick didn’t get the image of Jonny, Bastien, and Manon sitting on a couch together, watching cartoons, and doing Jonny’s weird nose scrunch thingy. He. Did. Not.

“When I tolded Mommy I wanted to telled you this story, she tolded me to ask you if you loveded anybody.”

Screw Abby, the two-faced asshole. No, scratch that, screw Sharpy, because the only way she could have found out was if Sharpy had told her. No, actually screw BOTH of them because now he has to find a way to not answer their kid. Which is going to be absolute torture.

“When I askeded Uncle Jonny,” Maddie says, reaching for a scone from the huge plate of them in the middle of the table. “He said he loveded you. Do you loveded him too?”

If Maddie wasn’t looking at him so gravely, like she had somehow inherited Jonny’s death glare without being genetically related to him, Patrick would’ve burst out laughing. He would’ve done a lot of things, actually. He would’ve asked where the camera is, and how much Sharpy was paying Maddie to do this. And maybe why she was even asking him this in the first place. But Maddie has her mouth pulled into frown, as if it was really important to her that he answered the question, and it would make her really upset if he didn’t. And he really couldn’t deny her anything could he?

(If he ever does get to experience the pipe-dream that the bond sent him, he’s probably going to be whipped cream with how spoiled his kids would be).

“Yeah Mads,” Patrick mumbles, voice coming out more gravelly than he expected. “ I love him too.”

“Like me and Sarah?” Maddie says, cocking her head to the side. “Or like Mommy and Daddy?”

Screw the Sharps for having intelligent spawn.

“I love Jonny—like a friend Mads. Like you and Sarah,” Patrick answers, cause like hell he’s spilling his secrets to a toddler, no matter how smart she is.

She’d probably just parrot it back to her parents anyways.

“Alright! Time to have a nap Maddie!” Sharpy exclaims, coming into the room mere seconds after Patrick mumbles the last “h” in Sarah.

Knowing the nosy fucker, he was probably outside their room the whole time waiting for Patrick to confess his undying love for Jonny.

Maddie tries to fight Sharpy on it, kicking and punching (Patrick owes her a fist-bump for that one) on the way to her bed. When Sharpy finally tucks her in, she immediately demands a book, which distracts Sharpy (“No Maddie, books are for bedtime”) enough for Patrick to make a strategic escape. He hopes he can make it out the front door before Sharpy can even get out of her room. He’s not looking forward to another deep talk about the importance of “communication” and “physical contact” between bondmates. At first, the talks had helped him out, but lately, it just feels like he’s dwelling on a bad thing. And Patrick is a new person now. He doesn’t do that anymore.

“Hold it!” Sharpy yells at him from the staircase, just as Patrick is pulling his coat on.

Patrick winces. Whatever Sharpy wants to talk about must be serious if he’s willing to risk his precious daughter’s sleep for this.

“If you think you’re getting out of here before we have a conversation about whatever the hell you and Tazer think you’re doing, then you are dead wrong,” Sharpy says, tone, well, sharp. “Sit your ass down on my couch.”

Patrick does, even though he drags his feet the whole way there. He knows that if he doesn’t have this conversation now, Sharpy will somehow find a way to have it with him later. He thought that maybe he could avoid it because the Final would likely distract Sharpy from asking any more questions, but from the way Sharpy sounds, Patrick knows it has to be something important. He’s not going to get out of this one anytime soon.

“You need to tell Jonny about the bond,” is what Sharpy starts with, plopping onto the sofa next to Patrick.

“Have we not been over this a million times?” Patrick sighs, pressing his head into his hands, a headache already building in the back of his temples.

“Yeah, but Maddie told me some… stuff about Jonny that pretty much changes everything.”

Patrick snorts. Maddie is great and all, but is Sharpy seriously going to believe a toddler as opposed to Patrick? A grown man?

“She told you that Jonny said he loved me? That about right?” Patrick asks rhetorically. “Cause she told me that too, and s’all bull.”

“How would you know if you’ve never asked him?” Sharpy says indignantly. “You need to tell him about the bond, and you’re an idiot if you don’t.”

Patrick’s blood boils. Sharpy knows about everything, and he has the audacity to tell Patrick that he’s an idiot for not telling Jonny? He has the audacity to tell Patrick that he needs to tell Jonny about his intense infatuation with him? Sharpy knows all the reasons that Patrick absolutely can’t, why Patrick’s being a fucking coward and not telling him. He agreed with Erica when Patrick had told him what she had said. And now he was asking Patrick to reveal his biggest secret, which could possibly crush him for fucking ever? Two weeks after he had told him to fucking move on? Fuck him!

“Unless you somehow voodoo magicked Jonny into loving me, pretty sure he’s still you know, NOT in love with me,” Patrick says, bristling. “I don’t really see the point of telling someone who is so completely not in love with me that I’m completely ass over teakettle in love with them. First of all, it would literally ruin my relationship with Jonny for life. Second of all, the bond would snap immediately because, once again, Jonny’s NOT in love with me. I’m reminding you again because you seem to have the attention span of a fucking goldfish and can’t remember the most important detail of this whole situation.”

Sharpy opens his mouth to speak, but Patrick clamps a hand over it to shut him up, not caring to remove it even when Sharpy disgustingly licks it. Patrick can’t fucking deal with it anymore. He needs to get through this.

“And lastly,” he hisses through gritted teeth. “Even if I was going to tell Jonny at some points, which I won’t, I would never EVER do it now, right before the Final. Do you want us to lose the Cup because the Captain suddenly shuts down his internal processor from an over-excessive amount of emotion? Because he will if I tell him, due to the fact that he’s a fucking Canadian hockey robot that can’t comprehend feelings!”

Sharpy looks genuinely stunned when Patrick finishes his rant and removes his hand from Sharpy’s mouth. Patrick guesses he didn’t expect that to come out when he sat Patrick down for this talk. Patrick hadn’t expected it to come out either, but it had felt… unbearably good to get those words out. At first. But then, it morphs into just pure, raw, melancholy. Because the truth hurts. Each and every single time.

(No matter how much you try and succeed at moving on).

The lie is so blatant that Sharpy’s face goes from shocked anger to sincere concern in mere seconds. Sharpy pulls Patrick in tight next to him on the couch, and Patrick flashes back to another house and another couch, where Sharpy had held Patrick just like how he’s holding him now and told him everything was going to be okay.

Patrick remembers how he had believed him.

“I just want you to be happy Peeks,” Sharpy mutters softly, so soft that Patrick almost doesn’t catch it.

“I am,” Patrick whispers back, catching himself off guard at how quiet his own voice is.

It almost feels like he’s a rookie again, and he’s trading dirty secrets with Sharpy in the player’s lounge before a game. Back then, it was always just them. No Jonny, no Abby, no Maddie, no strings tying them down. Just a single yellow one. Patrick doesn’t know if it would actually be possible to not be friends with Sharpy like Getzy had told him would happen in 2015. He feels like he doesn’t remember a time when Sharpy wasn’t his best-friend (aside from Jonny, but that was extremely different). It’s always been blinding yellow between them.

It had always been him and Sharpy against the world.

“I know Peeks,” is what Sharpy says when he finally speaks again, his cheeks looking a little wet. “But I want you to have what Abby and I have.”

Sharpy doesn’t have to say it for Patrick to know what he means. Patrick knows.

He wants him to have ultimate happiness.

When Patrick opens his mouth to answer Sharpy, tear tracks are running down his face.

“You settle for what you can get I guess,” Patrick says, half-heartedly shrugging.

Both of them know that’s the end of the conversation but neither of them can find it in themselves to move from the couch for hours, long enough for Abby to finish cooking dinner and long enough that it’s getting dark by the time Patrick actually finds the courage to leave.

If only he could use some of that to tell Jonny.

* * *

They lose 2-0 in the third game of the Final in Boston, and suddenly they’re down 2-1 in the series. The mood in the locker room is solemn more than anything, everyone knowing that they have to “be better”. Jonny, of course, includes this in his postgame speech, waxing lyrical about how they need to keep the momentum going into Boston in two days. It seems to lift everybody’s spirits enough, and even though they didn’t win, some of the guys decide to go to the hotel bar for some postgame drinks and team bonding.

Unfortunately, one of the guys is Shawsy, who seems to have made it his own personal mission to find Patrick a girl so he finally “gets over Jonny”.

(Patrick doesn’t mention to him how he’s almost 100% sure that’s never going to happen).

Patrick goes along anyways because he’s going to get shit from the guys for not going with them to shoot the shit, and he’s not in the mood to deal with questions from both the rookies and the vets about why he suddenly decided that he doesn’t like partying with the boys anymore.

He’s sitting at a dingy table with Seabs, nursing a club soda (“Peeks, the carbonation is bad for you!” Jonny had said.) because he doesn’t want to get drunk before practice tomorrow, when he sees Jonny talking up a girl at the bar. Again.

And usually, Patrick wouldn’t let it disturb his night, he really wouldn’t. Because Jonny is entitled to fuck whoever he wants to fuck, and even if it’s like driving a wooden stake into Patrick’s soul, he’s not going to do anything about it. He knows to leave it alone, that Jonny’ll deal with it.

But what the fucking fuck, it’s the Final. And Jonny’s trying to pick up? That’s not okay with Patrick. Patrick and Jonny’s personal relationship may be fucked up because of the stupid ass red string, but like HELL Patrick is letting Jonny mess up the team for a one nighter.

Hockey comes first. Always. Patrick had thought that Jonny knew that.

Seabs gives him a warning look when Patrick stands up from the table and starts moving towards Jonny. Which, okay, he probably should just leave it be because Seabs is practically Jonny’s older brother (once someone’s rookie, always someone’s rookie) and Jonny tells him all of his secrets. If Seabs is giving him looks to let it go, Patrick should listen. Or whatever listening with his eyes is.

But Seabs is just “practically” Jonny’s brother. Patrick’s—well, he used to be Jonny’s best friend. And now, he’s… something else. He still knows Jonny better than anyone though, and the bond just heightens that. So what if he’s listening to how the bond is thrumming “wrong, wrong, wrong” as Jonny touches the girl’s arm? This is going to benefit the whole team, not just Patrick. He stopped hoping the bond would actually help him out a long time ago.

“What’s up Tazer?” Patrick says, feigning casual as he swings an arm over Jonny’s shoulders, Broshie style.

“What’s up Lil Peekaboo?” Jonny says, raising an eyebrow at Patrick, clearly confused.

Patrick rolls his eyes. Peeks is the only acceptable variation of Peekaboo in Patrick’s opinion, but the guys never fail to call him repeatedly by the ones he hates. Lil Peekaboo is probably the worst out of all of them, and if it wasn’t for the huge blonde elephant in the room, Patrick would’ve probably called Jonny out on it.

“Oh my god!” The girl exclaims loudly, way too loud for a hotel bar. “You’re Patrick Kane! Like THE Patrick Kane.”

“Yeah! I am!” Patrick squeals, matching the girl’s tone. “Now fuck off.”

The girl looks completely flabbergasted as her eyes flutter from him to Jonny, trying to make sense of the situation. Jonny doesn’t look much better, his mouth dropped open in a small “o”, and even though he doesn’t shrug Patrick’s arm off of his shoulders, his body tenses up almost immediately.

“What the hell Patrick?” Jonny grits out, a deep frown on his face.

“Nothing!” Patrick says cheerfully. “Just thought this girl was bothering you.”

Jonny’s body tightens even more, like a volcano about to erupt, and oh no, this was definitely a bad idea. Patrick realizes this too little, too late because suddenly, Jonny’s pushing Patrick into the bar, knocking the glass of whatever he was drinking to the floor. It shatters instantaneously, and the hotel will probably charge them for it, but Patrick can’t find it in himself to care. Jonny’s face is inches away from his, their noses pressed together harshly, Jonny’s pupils blown out. In another situation, someone probably would’ve thought they were a couple, doing that weird eskimo kiss thing that some couples do, but there is absolutely no one in the room right now who could possibly think that.

Because Jonny… Jonny looks livid, his eyes burning with anger. Patrick can feel the flames of his frustration slowly licking their way up the bond as Jonny’s hands wrap around his wrists, boxing Patrick in. He whimpers when Jonny puts more pressure on his right wrist, the old injury flaring up just like Jonny’s irritation.

“Um, I’m gonna go…” Patrick hears someone say in the background; he can barely hear above the guttural rumble that’s coming from Jonny’s chest. “Thanks for the drink Jonny.”

Patrick’s focus is everywhere but the bar right now, thinking about how he would maybe enjoy this in a different context, about how Jonny’s hands might leave bruises for the guys to see in the locker room, how the yellow side of the bond is literally biting at the red side, making it curl up in fear like Patrick kind of wants to do now. Out of the corner of his eye, he can see Seabs shaking his head at the two of them in disappointment, like he knew this was going to happen. Patrick really, really wishes he had listened to him.

“You,” Jonny growls in Patrick’s ear, dragging the rough skin of his lips on it. “Have no say in who or who I don’t talk to.”

And yeah, Patrick’s admittedly a little bit scared because he’s never seen Jonny like this before, but he can still give it as good as it gets. Like hell he’s going to let Jonny patronize him like that. Jonny should know better. He should know that there was no way that Patrick would let him do this without fighting back.

“Fuck you!” Patrick spits at him. “You shouldn’t be picking someone up right now, in the middle of the playoffs? Do you want us to lose the Cup to the Bruins?”

“Stress. Reliever,” Jonny spits back, his jaw clicking with how angry he is.

“And what?” Patrick quips back, shoving his face even closer to Jonny’s. If Patrick stretches up, just a little bit, they would be kissing. Patrick doesn’t, even though the bond begs him to do it. He’s not going to ruin either of them like that. “Are the guys not good enough?”

The next words force their way out of his mouth, outside of his own accord. The bond shoves them out of him, like a punch to the gut, as a karma for not taking the risk and pressing his lips to Jonny’s. For not taking the chance to come home.

“Am I not enough?” Patrick whispers, the closest he’s been to revealing everything since the Streak ended.

Patrick watches as Jonny sucks in a sharp breath and his eyes go wide with shock, unable to comprehend what Patrick just said. His grip on Patrick’s wrists loosens just enough, and that’s it. Patrick shoves Jonny away from him roughly and bolts for the hotel elevator, not listening to Jonny’s cries for him to come back. He can hear footsteps behind him, and he just hopes that he can make it upstairs and to his room before whoever it is can catch him.

Patrick barrels into the tin can of an elevator car, thanking god that no one else is there, and presses the button for his floor before punching the “close door button” repeatedly. He still hasn’t seen who was chasing him, but gets a glimpse of Jonny’s “no wait!” face just as the elevator door slams shut.

Patrick fumbles with the key of his hotel room when he finally gets to his floor, intensely aware that Jonny is only mere seconds away from pinning him to the wall in the hallway and interrogating him. He most definitely took the next car up and certainly wouldn’t be taking no for an answer this time. He hears the ping that announces Jonny’s arrival just as he slips into the room and slams the deadbolt shut.

The knocking starts up less than 10 seconds later.

“Peeks, let me in! We need to talk!”

Patrick doesn’t, instead choosing to stare at the door blankly, desperately willing his body to not freak out. He can’t believe he just did that. He almost told Jonny and ruined everything he’s worked to hide for months.

“Peeks please!”

He can feel the bond on the verge of snapping, the pull of something unknown dragging Patrick down with it. It’s the most intense the bond has ever been, and Patrick feels like he’s standing on the edge of a cliff, seconds away from falling into a canyon of emotion. He doesn’t know where the yellow side starts and the red side ends, both of them reflecting Patrick’s feelings of misery and bewilderment. Patrick’s stuck in it, dizzy, and it’s clinging onto him like it has no plans to let him go anytime soon.

“Patrick,” he hears, muffled through the door. “Please.”

The desperate tone of Jonny’s voice drags Patrick out of his reverie, and like in the bar, the bond acts for him and opens the door to let Jonny in. Jonny’s on him instantly, hands grabbing everything he can reach, checking to see if Patrick is okay. Patrick lets out a sob because, fuck. Patrick shouldn’t want this as much as he does, shouldn’t NEED this. He’s been happy, happier than he’s been in months. It shouldn’t feel like everything is finally right just because Jonny is caressing his body with his baby soft hands. He shouldn’t be this needy for it.

Jonny tucks his face into the crook of his neck once he’s satisfied that Patrick is okay, and again, Patrick is hit with such a strong wave of “home”, he can’t stop himself from gasping wetly and burying his cries in Jonny’s shoulder. Jonny’s mumbling something into Patrick’s hair, and Patrick catches snippets of “I’m so sorry” and “I can’t believe I hurt you”. It’s when he hears, “I shouldn’t have done that,” that Patrick collects himself enough to actually have a proper conversation with Jonny.

“Umm,” Patrick says, pulling back from Jonny’s shoulder and wiping his arm under his nose to stop the flow of snot coming from it. “What did you need to talk to me about?”

Patrick’s kind of scared about the answer. It’s likely that Jonny knows about what’s going on with his yellow string and knows about the bond. And being the emotionless robot that Jonny is, he’ll probably want to get rid of it. And then Patrick would have to go to Getzy to figure out how to cut it off and then Patrick will never have another meaningful relationship again, no matter how much he tries. Just great. He steels himself in preparation, waiting for the inevitable shot to the heart when Jonny tells him that he just wants to be friends.

“I don’t pick up,” Jonny says, completely serious while throwing a curveball out of left field.

Patrick’s surprised for a second, before he lets out a sad snort. Of course Jonny would be a good enough friend to try to cheer him up before delivering him the bad news. That’s just the kind of person Jonny is.

“Yeah right,” Patrick says, walking away from Jonny completely. He takes a seat on the bed and motions for Jonny to follow. “Thanks for humouring me. Now, what was it that you really wanted to tell me?”

Patrick’s not ready for the answer, but he thinks if he asks Jonny directly, it might hurt less.

Jonny sits next to him on the bed, and just like in St. Louis, he drags his fingers down the length of Patrick’s arm. He clasps their hands together, like they were just meant to fit, and Patrick resists his urge to whimper and press his lips to Jonny’s. Patrick can’t let him know how much this means to him, not when he’s about to break the bond apart. He can’t. He needs to act casual.

“Nothing. That was it. I don’t pick up, or not as much as you probably think I do.”

Patrick reels. What the hell does Jonny mean? He’s seen girl after girl slip into Jonny’s room with him, night after night on the road. He’s seen him leave with girls in cabs when they’re at home in Chicago. What does Jonny mean that he’s picking up? Cause clearly, the girls are there.

“What about the end of the season? Game 4 in Minnesota? If you’re not picking up, what are you doing?”

Jonny blushes profusely, rubbing the back of his neck sheepishly with his free hand. He seems embarrassed, like he doesn’t want to talk about it all that much, but is pushing through for Patrick.

“I mean, I still pick up, but not more than I used to. Those girls… I didn’t even sleep with most of them.”

“Well then what were you doing?” Patrick says, suddenly angry.

He can’t believe that Jonny would hang him off a fucking string like that. That’s just terribly, horribly cruel to do to your bondmate, and even though Jonny doesn’t know, it’s still a terrible thing to do to one of your friends. It’s not right. Jonny better have a good explanation for this, because Patrick doesn’t know how he’ll find the energy to forgive him for this. He doesn’t know how he can forgive Jonny for making him feel so damn unimportant.

(Eventually is the answer.)

“I—” Jonny cuts himself off, like the words are hard to say. “Invited them back to my hotel room to have conversations with me.”

“Conversations?” Patrick questions. “You picked up girls to have conversations.”

Patrick doesn’t know who’s more ridiculous. Jonny for trying that lie out, or Patrick for actually thinking anyone would pick up girls for something other than sex. He drags his eyes to the floor, not wanting to look at Jonny’s face when he laughs it off and tells Patrick he’s just kidding and that no, Patrick was never enough for him.

But Jonny, ever the surprise, takes two fingers and uses them to tilt Patrick’s chin up so their gazes meet. And fuck, his eyes look so fucking sincere, the clear brown going soft, as he presses his nose to Patrick’s again. But unlike in the bar, it’s gentle and caring, and Patrick wishes more than anything in this moment that he could fix everything by just kissing him.

Patrick can’t though, so he just settles for letting Jonny bump their noses together lightly.

“I did,” Jonny admits. “Because after that first night in LA, it was so fucking lonely in my room that I couldn’t handle it.”

And oh. That wasn’t what Patrick was expecting.

“You picked up girls because you got lonely without me there?” Patrick asks, incredulously.

“Yeah,” Jonny says, his lips brushing lightly over Patrick’s cupid bow. “It was so goddamn silent, and I just wanted someone to talk to. So, I would go to bars and find girls who seemed like they just wanted to talk me and not have sex. You probably didn’t notice, but most of them left after like 10 minutes when they realized I didn’t want to do anything.”

Patrick feels like crying in relief, because even though Jonny isn’t his, it had still felt like a betrayal. A straight up hit in the stomach knowing that Patrick wasn’t enough for him. But now, it sounds like Patrick was enough. More than enough. So enough for Jonny that he had missed him when Patrick was gone.

“Why didn’t you just talk to me?”

After all, it would have saved both of them a lot of trouble.

“I didn’t want to bother you about it,” Jonny says, and oh shit, Patrick can feel his breath on his lips. “You—you seemed happy rooming by yourself, and I didn’t want to make you feel like you had to room with me again just because I was lonely.”

And fuck, they’re both idiots, such idiots about each other.

“It sucked,” Patrick gasps out, feeling adventurous enough to place a hand on Jonny’s neck and pull them impossibly closer together. “It fucking sucked not rooming with you Jonny. I hated it. Please don’t leave me like that again.”

“I won’t,” Jonny promises. “Fuck Patrick, I won’t.”

The bond hums with happiness from their close proximity, and even though Patrick hates agreeing with it, he feels better than he has in ages with Jonny wrapped around him like this. The yellow side stays silent, not protesting at all at the so not-friend thing that they were doing. Patrick figures that means Jonny is okay with everything.

“We’re rooming together next year,” Jonny states, like it’s a fact.

Patrick laughs, bright and bubbly.

“Yeah,” he agrees. “Yeah, we’ll probably need to talk to management about that.”

Jonny’s own laugh is like music to Patrick’s ears.

“So what now?” Jonny asks.

And Patrick really shouldn’t because even if Jonny’s okay with everything, that doesn’t mean they’re friends. And Patrick certainly doesn’t deserve it, but he wants it more than anything. This might be the only time he gets it too, the only time this happens before they go back to whatever awkward dance they were doing before this. The only time he’ll get to have this for the next however many months or even years.

“Stay?” Patrick whispers. “Please?”

Jonny nods, more easily than Patrick thought. He lays Patrick down on the bed, the two of them still wrapped together and pulls the covers up over them. Patrick’s out like a light, within minutes, sleeping through the whole night for the first time since LA. And Jonny? Jonny stays until morning, when the sun rises over the Boston skyline, giving birth to a new day. One day closer to the silver cup that holds all of their dreams.

Well, except for one.

* * *

Patrick gets the call after practice before Game 5, when he’s still in the locker room.

It’s from an unknown number, but his iPhone helpfully tells him that it’s an area code from London, Ontario. And in truth, he only knows one person who would still be calling from London.

He contemplates not picking up because he really doesn’t want to have this conversation right now, but Getzy had told him the last time they texted that he needs to deal with his purple string problem because it could be what’s stopping the red string bond from properly clicking. Patrick would’ve had to do something about it this summer anyways, but he didn’t expect the opportunity to present itself smack dab in the middle of the Stanley Cup Final.

He lets the call go to voicemail, but the ringing just starts up again, and damn, Patrick didn’t expect him to be this persistent. Patrick picks up on the second ring, because he knows, he just knows, that this will be a distraction if he doesn’t. Might as well, get it over with.

“ ‘Lo?,” Patrick says, his lisp making itself known. “It’s Pat Kane.”

“Hey PK,” Gags says. “It’s me.”

He knows he doesn’t have to tell Patrick why he’s calling. There can only be one reason, the same reason that the two of them haven’t talked since Patrick’s rookie year. The same reason they had that blowout fight that resulted in Patrick crying into Sharpy’s arms for a solid week.

The string.

“Hey Gags. Do I need to be alone for this conversation?” Patrick says, biting at the skin around his fingers.

It’s one of Patrick’s many nervous ticks, but it’s probably one of his most noticeable. He only ever does that when he’s really anxious about something. Jonny, who’s in the stall next to him, obviously knows this, and yanks his fingers out of his mouth before he can start sucking on his thumb (another one of his ticks).

(And no, he doesn’t have an oral fixation. Whoever came up with that idea is clearly ludicrous.)

“Where are you right now?” Gags asks, voice loud enough to be heard by anyone in Patrick’s general vicinity.

Unfortunately, that’s Jonny. Jonny, who raises an eyebrow at Patrick when he realizes it’s not one of Patrick’s sisters demanding him to get home, so they can go shopping, and mouths “Getzy”. Patrick shakes his head, and Jonny immediately mouths “Segs?” at him. Patrick shakes his head again, and Jonny must be running through his head of all of Patrick’s friends who could possibly be calling him right now. Finally, Jonny, who was around for the 2007 freakout, settles on “Gags?” and Patrick nods.

Jonny’s forehead scrunches up in anger, his mouth thinning into a line. He clearly remembers how fucking miserable Patrick had been after Gags had eventually stopped calling and Sharpy was always in their room comforting him. Evidently, he still holds it against Gags because he looks like he’s seconds away from smashing Patrick’s phone against the wall.

“Hello? PK?” Gags practically shouts into the receiver so loudly that Patrick has to move it away from his ear. “You still there?”

“Yeah, yeah. Still here,” Patrick says. “Sorry, I’m in the locker room with the boys.”

But apparently in the time that it took for Patrick to answer Gags, Jonny has completely cleared the room for him, with only a couple of the veterans (Seabs, Duncs, and Sharpy) sticking around. If it were anyone else, Patrick probably would’ve snuck away or something. But these are his boys, and Patrick honestly doesn’t mind if they hear this conversation, because god knows he’ll probably have to sum it up for them later. Most of them know, in great detail, about his Gags issues anyways.

"Okay, hope you’re okay with them hearing this,” Gags says, and Patrick nods vigorously, even though Gags can’t see him.

“Yeah, it’s cool,” Patrick says, wedging the phone between his ear and his shoulder, so he can at least start packing some stuff up to leave after.

Jonny, who has apparently finished rounding up the guys, sits back down in his stall and places a reassuring hand on Patrick’s shoulder, and fuck. Patrick loves Jonny so fucking much. He knows exactly what Patrick needs all the fucking time. Idly, Patrick wonders why it was never like this with Gags, when supposedly, purple string bonds were supposed to feel as intense as red ones in the beginning.

“ ‘Kay, I wanted to ask you why the string is fucking sending fucking photos of Jonathan fucking Toews.”

Patrick’s spine goes shock-straight faster than it ever has before, and he quickly shrugs Jonny’s hand off of his shoulder before retreating into the players’ lounge. He shoves a stray hockey stick in between the door handles to stop Jonny from barrelling in, and he’s glad he does because Jonny starts knocking on the door immediately, just like in Boston. Patrick wishes he could still be in the locker room and be talking to Gags, but there’s no way in hell that Patrick is going to let Jonny know that the purple string bond is sending photos of him to Gags.

“What?” Patrick whispers, and he hopes Sam can still hear him over all the banging. “Why the hell would it be sending you photos of Jonny?”

The banging has increased, and he can hear a muffled “Lil Peekaboo” coming from the other side, which means Sharpy has definitely joined Jonny in trying to bust down the door. Maybe Seabs and Duncs too.

“Well,” Sam quips back, and there’s the anger Patrick was expecting. “Maybe it’s because it’s telling me that it connected to the fucking wrong person!”

“What the hell do you mean Sam?” Patrick yells, and he knows the Sam will hit Gags hard. 

In hockey, the closer you get to an actual person’s name, the more it actually hurts. Nicknames mean something. They mean everything’s good and everything’s cool between people. The only reason you would call anyone in the league by their first name is a) because you don’t know them yet, b) because you’re ribbing them, or c) because you’re being absolutely fucking serious about something. Or if you’re Patrick d) because they’re Jonny Toews and you’re absolutely, 100% in love with them.

“What I mean Patrick Timothy,” Sam strikes back. “Is that the bond is sending me images of Jonathan fucking Toews. Because apparently the string should’ve connected to him when you were fucking thirteen and on the fucking Junior Flyers.”

And oh, now the string is talking to him, sending him images of Jonny when he was young. And shit, it’s even cataloging how he had felt the first time he had met Jonny, that giddy excitement of finally meeting someone who was just as good, if not better, than him at hockey. He feels light for some reason, like Gags had lifted a weight off of his chest. It’s like an “ah, that’s why I’m so in love with Jonny.”

But then it shows him why the bond snapped. How there wasn’t enough time before it was the summer tournament was all over. How the bond was reaching out and was going to connect before it snapped during Patrick’s drive home to Buffalo. And goddammit, it hurts. Patrick had buried those feelings under years of telling himself that Gags was his first love, that Gags was his everything at one point in his life. Now, it’s visceral, just a constant cry of “why, why, why”. Why it’s stopping the red string connection from happening. Why Gags is even bringing this up again in the first place.

“Why are you even telling me this?” Patrick shouts over the cries of “Peeks!” and “Peekaboo!” and “Kaner!” and even, “Patrick!”.

“I’m telling you this because I fucking hate you!” Gags yells. “You fucking strang me along for years Patrick! I wanted you more than I wanted anyone in the entire fucking world! And you! You left me hanging for who? Jonathan Toews?”

Patrick chokes on his own spit. Clearly, he underestimated how much he meant to Sam because from his point of view, it was Sam who wanted nothing to do with him. He still remembers that night in his rookie year, where Sam had given him a call (after months of ignoring Patrick’s texts) and told him that he was a horrible friend and that he never wanted to see him again.

Needless to say, Patrick kept his distance the next time they played the Oilers.

“You’re gonna listen up Patrick Timothy Kane Jr!” Sam hollers, just as Patrick is opening his mouth to chew him out. “I thought you were my red string person! I thought you were my one! But you were jackshit for me but sadness!”

“Fuck you!” Patrick replies. “I texted you how many times over that summer? If anything, you’re the one who left me hanging!”

“If I mattered enough, you would’ve gone and found me! But no, you abandoned me for the love of your life, the apple of your eye, Jonathan fucking Toews! You know how much that hurts a person? To know that they’ll always be playing second fiddle to a guy you practically just met? No one wants to subject themselves to that Patrick.”

And fuck, he’s kind of right. After that one argument, Patrick didn’t fight for them at all. He pretty much just saw it as a lost cause, and gave up altogether. He must have hurt Sam in so many ways, like Jonny’s hurting him now, but even worse. At least Jonny’s here with him. Patrick hasn’t seen Sam outside of games in years. It must have torn him up inside. Patrick knows that it tore him up inside when he thought Sam was the one who left.

And maybe that’s what’s stopping the red string bond from fully connecting. Because to be honest, he’s never really gotten over what happened with Sam. He’s always felt strange whenever someone mentioned it, whether it be Getzy or Broshie. It was always the string he hated talking about the most to anyone because he so clearly shut that time of his life out of his mind. Because deep down inside of himself, Patrick thinks he knew that he was the one who left Sam in the dust. Patrick was an NHL star, Patrick was playing for an Original Six team, Patrick had new friends, Patrick had Jonny. Sam didn’t have anyone after Patrick left.

“Gags, I’m sorry. I’m so so sorry,” Patrick pleads. “I didn’t mean to do that to you. I did love you.”

“I don’t need your love anymore,” Gags spits out. “And I certainly don’t forgive you. But here you go. Here you fucking go, here’s the closure that Getzy said you needed. I hope you grow up and learn your fucking lesson. Fight for it.”

The receiver is still ringing dully in Patrick’s ears when the stick holding the door handles together finally breaks, and he’s being tackled in a hug by 4 humongous hockey players. Sharpy, Duncs, Seabs, and Jonny are all there, and they’re tugging him in close and whispering “it’ll be okay, it’ll be okay.”

He doesn’t believe it until Jonny presses a kiss to his curls, and he hears the word “fight” reverberate through the purple string bond, like a fucking blessing from Gags.

* * *

Somehow, even after the Gags debacle, Patrick had still managed to screw his head on right, and potted two goals in the Blackhawks win. He feels giddy and light, but through his happy reverie, he still has to remind himself that they have at least one more game before they can get their hands on the cup. Patrick has no doubt that they’ll do it, and that he’ll have his hands on silver within the next week.

He hadn’t had the chance to debrief the Sam thing with any of the guys though, claiming exhaustion and rushing out of the rink to get home for his pre-game nap before any of them could corner him for details. Patrick managed to escape from his sisters too, thanking god that all of them except for Jackie are staying at a hotel and not at his apartment. It would’ve gotten messy if he had to escape from not only the guys, but his sisters too.

Secretly, Patrick’s glad that he hasn’t had the time to talk to anyone about Sam. Their entire conversation was confusing as hell, and Patrick’s honestly not even sure what he was supposed to get out of it. Fight? For what? What’s he supposed to fight for?

Patrick and Jackie get home at around one in the morning, after dinner with their parents. Patrick’s still running high on the win, but Jackie is clearly exhausted. She tells him that she’s headed to bed, and Patrick is very much okay with that. He’s still too keyed up to get any sleep for the next few hours, but he’s not mean enough to deny his youngest sister her precious beauty sleep.

He takes the time to check his phone, buzzing with hundreds of texts from the guys, even though he saw them less than 2 hours ago. There’s one from Shawsy asking if he wants to go out with the rookies to celebrate the win, which he answers with no, because he doesn’t particularly want to be getting drunk before they fly to Boston for Game 6. There is another one from Seabs asking to FaceTime, which Patrick tries, but Seabs (the fucker) doesn’t answer, probably dead asleep. There are over 100 from Sharpy, asking if he was okay or not, and then there are all of the missed calls from Jonny, followed by a single text.

“Don’t go anywhere,” is what it says, cryptic as ever.

And well, Patrick doesn’t necessarily want to listen to Jonny, but where is he going to go at one in the morning?

Patrick expects Jonny to be arriving at his place in about 20 minutes (why else would he tell Patrick to not go anywhere?), so he settles on the couch and turns on the TV to watch today’s highlights. He was going to do this tomorrow on the plane, but if he has the time right now, why wait until the next day? It gives him time to do other things on the flight, like wait until Sharpy has fallen asleep and draw a mustache on him.

The doorbell rings at quarter to two, which is later than Patrick expected. Patrick starts to get up to open the door, but Jonny, impatient as ever, uses his own key to let himself in. Immediately, he pushes Patrick back down onto the couch and turns on Patrick’s PSP.

“We’re playing video games,” Jonny announces, like that’s a perfectly normal thing to be doing in someone else’s house at 2 am.

He plops down onto the couch right next to Patrick, a solid line of warmth pressed to Patrick’s side. Their thighs are crushed together, Jonny’s larger one right next to Patrick’s, and Patrick’s suddenly filled with pure, raw desire as Jonny hands him a controller. Fuck, he wants Jonny so bad. He wants this in another context, where it would be acceptable to lean his head on Jonny’s shoulder and smack a kiss into the crook of his neck. Where it would be acceptable to cross their ankles and play some sort of footsie. Where it would be acceptable to have Jonny sling an arm over Patrick’s shoulders and tuck him close enough that Patrick feels safe and at home.

But this isn’t that, so Patrick grips the controller hard instead, if just to stop himself (or maybe the bond, he’s not sure the difference anymore) from reaching over and tugging at the collar of Jonny’s old Strength t-shirt to bring him in for a kiss.

“And why are we playing video games?” Patrick asks, mostly to distract him from how much he wants.

Jonny glares at him like the answer’s obvious.

“Because?” Jonny says, opening up NHL 11 (that Patrick so did not buy just because Jonny’s face was on it). “We haven’t done it in a while.”

Idly, Patrick remembers how he thought he could be normal around Jonny, and he almost laughs out loud at how ridiculous the notion is now. How could he ever think that him and Jonny could be any semblance of normal? Here he is, daydreaming about Jonny kissing him (and maybe fucking him) all because their thighs are pressed close to each other. It’s so unbelievably selfish and disgusting, when Jonny will only ever see him as a friend. And shit, Patrick feels like he’s standing on the edge of a cliff again, just like in Boston. There’s just something in the air that’s changing, a tension that wasn’t there before Jonny got here. Patrick’s almost 100% sure it’s the bond, and he suddenly just knows that something’s going to change today. The bond is fluctuating, like it’s halfway between yellow and red, and Patrick doesn’t know what that means. If he loses this, he’ll be miserable. Patrick will never find something that even compares to this, the feeling of having a red string. Because Getzy was right. It’s a gift, a privilege. And you only get one. And somehow, Patrick is going to have to live with it when it snaps (because he can feel it about to change, about to shift), even though he’ll hate the yellow string connecting him and Jonny for the rest of his life. He’ll be broken forever, but he just hopes that he’ll be strong enough to hold the pieces together.

But maybe, he can hold on and have this one night. This one night before everything goes to shit, where he can have Jonny as close as he wants, as close as he needs before the bond leaves him hanging.

Patrick turns to chirp Jonny on how long it’s taking him to start the game, but Jonny turns at the same time and their noses collide into each other, and oh. Maybe this is what the purple string was talking about when it said fight. Because Jonny’s breath is becoming erratic and his pupils are absolutely blown, swallowing most of the clear brown, so only a thin sliver of it is left. Maybe it told him to fight because Jonny is nuzzling the tip of Patrick’s nose with his own, and Patrick will be damned if he never gets to see this again in his lifetime. Maybe it told him to fight because it knew how empty he would be if the bond snapped.

And right then, with Jonny’s uneven breathing brushing his lips, Patrick knows. One way or another, he has to tell Jonny. He has to take the risk of the bond abandoning him because then, at least there’s a chance he gets to keep this, For life. If he doesn’t, it’ll snap on it’s own anyways.

So Patrick fights.

Patrick purposely moves closer, and Jonny follows, like opposite magnets so attracted to each other that it’s physical torture to keep them apart. The red side of the bond is humming its approval as they get three inches, two inches, and then one inch away. Patrick can feel Jonny’s lips barely graze his own, and he wants to cry in happiness because finally, it’s happening. He hopes the bond lets him relish in this one moment of pure bliss before this feeling disappears forever.

And just like that, the one time Patrick asks the bond for anything, Jonny is reeling back, putting 4 feet of distance between them on the couch. He’s panting, like he’s just run a thousand liners and Patrick is no longer warm. In fact, he feels colder than the North Pole itself. The bond curls in like a snail, and there’s a sharp pain in Patrick’s head, like an icepick to his cerebellum. And Patrick is bracing himself, bracing himself for the inevitable fracture in the bond, waiting for the pain to hit him full force. He was so stupid to think that fighting would change anything. That it would lead to anything but sadness. That it would make Jonny love him.

“I—I need to go,” Jonny says, rushing to put his shoes on and get the hell out of Patrick’s apartment.

The door shuts with a resounding click as Jonny leaves, and Patrick sits on his couch, eyes closed, until morning, waiting for the hurt to subside. He doesn’t have the nerve to crack his eyes open and look at his red string, even as morning comes.

It’s not until Jackie walks into the living room, rubbing sleep crust out of her eyes, and says “Why was Jonny here at 2 am?” that the dam breaks.

* * *

They win the Stanley Cup after the most insane 17 seconds Patrick has ever experienced. And somehow, it still feels hollow, like there should be more, like there should be something in that space. Maybe Jonny. Maybe someone else.

But Patrick puts on his smile, and rushes to hug all of the boys because even after everything, they still won the Cup. He grabs whoever he can find: Sharpy, Seabs, Shawsy, Hoss. He even hugs Jonny, because it wouldn’t be right not to, even though he had spent the better part of the last two days crying on Jackie’s shoulder.

“I love you Jonny!” Patrick says, delirious enough to speak the truest words he’s ever known. “Way to step up big!”

It hurts to say it. Of course it does, it’s the bitter truth that he told himself that he would never tell Jonny. But it feels good to say, although Jonny will definitely just take it for a heat of the moment thing. And that’s what it is, mostly. It’s the cause of a hard fought series win and euphoric happiness. But it’s also Patrick’s way of fighting. After that night in his apartment, he hadn’t wanted to fight anymore. He was done. He figured, what the hell, if it happens, it happens. But when he really thought about it, it was a no brainer. Patrick knows he’d fight for Jonny, for their bond, every single day of his life if he has to. It can’t be how it was with Sam. Patrick refuses to let Jonny think that he only fought for one night. He’s gonna fight until the bond leaves him completely. And so far, it hasn’t. Patrick checked.

The equipment managers are handing out hats now, and Sharpy shoves one onto his unruly curls, just as the red carpet is rolled out, and Gary Bettman begins his Conn Smythe spiel. Patrick knows theoretically that he might get it, especially after his killer performance in the Final, but he knows that so many others deserve it too. Hoss, for doing everything under the sun for the team, 5 on 5, powerplay, even PK. Crow for being a fucking awesome goalie. Jonny, for well, everything.

He doesn’t realize how tense he is until Jonny skates over to him, and squeezes his arm before saying “Don’t worry, you’ll get it.” It takes everything in him to not shudder and pull Jonny closer, but Patrick just tilts his head up at Jonny and smiles weakly.

In the end, it does go to Patrick, and he skates up to Bettman to grab the trophy. Obviously, it’s not the first time Patrick’s had to interact with Bettman, but it’s one of the first where he had to actually make physical contact with him. It lasts approximately 30 seconds, before Patrick is shying away and skating back towards Jonny and Sharpy. He doesn’t know what it is, but Bettman always gives him the creeps.

Patrick lets himself get enveloped in a hug from Sharpy and Jonny, and through the noise of the crowd, he makes out Sharpy’s “Good job Peeks,” and Jonny’s “Fucking fantastic Peeksy, love you.” The latter cuts more than Patrick would like to admit, especially because it’s just always a fucking heat of the moment thing, but he accepts it anyways because again, you get what you can get.

“Jonathan Toews,” Bettman booms over the booing crowd as Patrick hands the Conn Smythe to one of their trainers to put in the locker room. “You have the honour of hoisting the Stanley Cup.”

Jonny skates up to Bettman with ease, somehow managing to look far less upset at him than Patrick did, even after suffering through months of lockout negotiations with him. Jonny quickly shakes Bettman’s hand before grabbing the Cup, and posing for the photo. And that’s when Patrick feels it, a click deep down inside of him that he feels he’s been waiting weeks to happen. And he knows that’s the end of it, the end of his red string, and he pries his eyes away from Jonny as he lifts the Cup, too depressed about losing the bond to be able to watch Jonny be happy without it. Tears start to block his vision, the pain and hurt of the bond cracking in half too much for him to handle without having some sort of physical reaction. Patrick hopes it looks like he’s just crying tears of joy on national television.

Patrick hears Jonny’s whoop of joy, just as he directs his gaze over to Sharpy, who looks strangely enough, like a man who has just seen the light. He’s mouthing something at Patrick, but Patrick can’t really make it out, not with the tears now running down his face. It looks important though, so Patrick starts to skate towards him, wondering what the hell could be more important than the Cup.

Suddenly, something slams into Patrick. Hard. Not physically, but mentally, and he turns his head to see Jonny standing in front of him, with the Cup above his head. Instinctively, Patrick raises his arms to catch the Cup in his hands, helping Jonny lift the 30 pound silver chalice up. Which, what the fuck, because the whole team agreed that the Cup was going to Handzus, like weeks ago. It certainly wasn’t supposed to go to Patrick first.

“What the hell are you doing?” Patrick says, locking eyes with Jonny, staring into clear, clear brown.

“Something I should have done a long time ago,” Jonny replies, before cupping Patrick’s face in his hands and pressing his lips to Patrick’s in front of 20 000 people, like it’s the easiest thing in the world.

And then Patrick’s being sucked into the bond. He sees Jonny waking up alone in his hotel room in LA and feeling oddly off the entire day because Patrick’s not there, Patrick’s not there, Patrick’s not there. He sees Jonny in St. Louis, watching Patrick hang his head low in the bar next to TJ and wishing more than anything that he could take away the melancholy Patrick was feeling. He sees Jonny in his apartment two nights ago, desperately wanting to pull Patrick in close to keep him safe. Patrick sees scene after scene after scene of Jonny feeling exactly the same things that he was feeling, but more alone and confused than he ever was because Jonny’s side was yellow.

And then he sees the click. When Jonny looked at Patrick just after touching the Cup and realized that he wanted nothing more than to love Patrick unconditionally and have him love Jonny back. When Jonny brushed his lips against the Cup, and saw a red string glinting off of it, and knowing, just knowing that it had to connect to Patrick, even before he saw the other half.

Patrick feels Jonny’s love pouring out of every single cell in his body, and Patrick starts crying, because how in hell could he have ever thought that Jonny wouldn’t love him? Jonny’s loved him since before the string was red, before there was any indication from Patrick that he wanted him. 

Patrick’s floating on cloud nine now, Jonny’s love lifting him up, up, up until there’s nowhere left to go but down, back into Jonny’s arms where home is. And Patrick’s full on sobbing now, but Jonny eats it out of his mouth, kissing Patrick again, and again, and again, like he can’t get enough of him. Like he’s so drunk off of Patrick that he’ll never get enough.

And even though this is going to be the biggest PR mess in history and Patrick’s arms are shaking because the Cup is heavy, and Seabs is catcalling them, Patrick can’t find it in himself to care one bit.

Because this?

This right here, with the Boston fans all booing them, with the Cup over their heads, with Patrick’s lips crushed against Jonny’s like they belong there.

This is Patrick’s ultimate happiness.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all so much for reading! I have a couple more projects planned for the summer and some sequels to the [rock, paper, scissors...shoot!](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24452125) 'verse (which you should check out if you haven't). If there's interest, I have some ideas for a coda for this 'verse that I'd totally be willing to write too. Thanks again for sticking around for this!
> 
> Update: here's the [ coda!](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26975986)
> 
> **Translations:**
> 
> Papa? Pourquoi est-ce que tu donnes Daddy un baiser? - Papa? Why did you kiss Daddy?  
> Parce que je peux - Because I can.  
> Bastien! Tu vas blesser Manon! - Bastien! You're going to hurt Manon!


End file.
